Preamble

The House met at half-past Two o'clock

PRAYERS

[Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair]

DEATH OF A MEMBER

Mr. Speaker: I regret to have to inform the House of the death of Norman Noel Dodds, esquire, Member for Erith and Crayford, and I desire on behalf of the House to express our sense of the loss we have sustained and our sympathy with the relatives of the hon. Member.

WRITS ISSUED DURING THE ADJOURNMENT

Mr. SPEAKER acquainted the House that there had been issued, during the Adjournment, warrants for new Writs for the Cities of London and Westminster, in the room of the right hon. Sir Harry Braustyn Hylton Hylton-Foster, deceased, and for Erith and Crayford, in the room of Norman Noel Dodds, esquire, deceased.

PETITION

Vietnam

Mr. Lipton: I beg leave to present a Petition to this honourable House signed by some 4,500 residents of Brixton.
The Petition states that the war in Vietnam is causing death and desolation to the Vietnamese people, and may possibly develop into a world conflagration. It continues:
Wherefore your Petitioners pray that this House urges Her Majesty's Government to dissociate themselves from United States policy of military intervention in Vietnam, to demand the immediate withdrawal of all American forces from Vietnam, and to work for the recall of the 1954 Geneva Conference, and to follow a peaceful and independent foreign policy.
And your Petitioners, as in duty bound, will ever pray.

Oral Answers to Questions — POST OFFICE

Departmental Staff

Mr. Onslow: asked the Postmaster-General what increase or decrease in staff there was in the Department under his control in the period 16th October, 1964 to 15th October, 1965; and what increase or decrease he anticipates in the period up to 15th April, 1966.

The Postmaster-General (Mr. Anthony Wedgwood Benn): Increases of 11,500 and 5,500 respectively. These are increases of 3 per cent. and 1½ per cent.: during the period October, 1964 to October, 1965, the business turnover of the Post Office has increased by about 7 per cent., and a similar rate of increase is expected in the coming year.

Mr. Onslow: Can the right hon. Gentleman tell the House why the first figure that he gave, 11,500, so much exceeds the forecast which he made last April of an increase of 6,500 during the calendar year? Can he also say how much of the increase is on the purely administrative side of Post Office duties?

Mr. Benn: On the second part of the question, I should require notice. On the first part, at least part of the reason is that the recruitment campaign for postmen has been more successful than we then expected. We are a very fast-growing industry, and we shall need more people in the future.

Telegraph Poles

Mr. Charles Morrison: asked the Postmaster-General what is the annual expenditure on timber for telegraph poles; and what proportion of the timber is imported.

The Assistant Postmaster-General (Mr. Joseph Slater): The annual expenditure in recent years has averaged about £½ million. About 90 per cent. of the poles are imported.

Mr. Morrison: Would not the hon. Gentleman agree that, with the huge area of the forestry plantation now coming to fruition, there might be increased scope for using still more home-grown timber for telegraph poles?

Mr. Slater: I have every sympathy with that suggestion. However, we seek competitive tenders for all supplies. The prices of home-grown and imported timber are about the same. But when prices for imported timber are lower than prices for home-grown, we normally offer the home growers contracts for the most they can supply at the import price level.

Mr. Manuel: What information has my hon. Friend secured about felling operations by the Forestry Commission over the next ten years, for instance? What proportion of that timber will be suitable for telegraph poles?

Mr. Slater: Perhaps my hon. Friend will give me notice of that question.

Increased Postal Charges (Nationalised Industries)

Mr. Marten: asked the Postmaster-General if he is aware that some nationalised industries have expressed their intention to deliver their own mail rather than pay the increased postal charges; what is his policy in this matter; and if he will make a statement.

Mr. Benn: I am aware of a Press report to the effect that one Electricity Board intends to deliver its own accounts. The originator of letters may deliver them himself or have them delivered by his staff if he so wishes. I have no intention of changing the present policy.

Mr. Marten: Is not this a sad commentary on the policy of the Government in raising the cost of postage? Is it also not a reflection in part on the cascade of rather cheap and nasty stamps that the right hon. Gentleman is pouring out?

Mr. Benn: The criticism of British stamps goes back at least to 8th May, 1840, when The Times described Rowland Hill's stamps as a disgrace to the arts of this country.

Space Policy

Mr. Marten: asked the Postmaster-General if he will now make a statement on the space policy of his Department.

Mr. Benn: I would refer the hon. Gentleman to the Answer which I gave the hon. Member for Bournemouth, West (Sir J. Eden) on 2nd February.

Mr. Marten: When will the Interim Committee on Satellite Communications report?

Mr. Benn: The question as to the rival merits of the synchronous as against the medium altitude satellite systems will be announced next year after the assessment of the Early Bird operations.

Stamps (Special Issues)

Sir E. Bullus: asked the Postmaster-General how many commemorative stamps he now proposes to issue during the year 1966.

Mr. Benn: In addition to the Robert Burns and Westminster Abbey commemorative stamps already announced I shall issue special stamps for the World Cup Football Championships on 1st June and the 900th Anniversary of the Battle of Hastings on 14th October. I also intend to introduce special pictorial issues. I shall announce the details later.

Sir E. Bullus: One accepts the desirability of some of these commemorative stamps, but is it not more essential for the right hon. Gentleman and his Department to apply all their attention to improving the rapidly deteriorating delivery service?

Mr. Benn: This argument would have applied to almost all the commemorative stamp issues, which are widely welcomed. If the hon. and gallant Gentleman is interested, he will have seen that the Council of Industrial Design paid special tribute to the stamp issues this year. Last year, world commemorative stamp issues totalled 4,675 and in this country only eight. I believe that our stamp designers, who are pacemakers in this field, should be given encouragement.

Mr. George Jeger: In future will my right hon. Friend consult mature political advisers about the issue of commemorative stamps so as to avoid publishing objectionable Fascist emblems?

Mr. Benn: I take it that my hon. Friend is referring to the Battle of Britain stamps. No doubt he will recall, as I do, that it was the custom of R.A.F. pilots during the Battle of Britain to paint swastikas on their aircraft to signify their victories.

Mr. Gibson-Watt: How many commemorative issues have been produced


far later than the right hon. Gentleman said they would be?

Mr. Benn: As the hon. Gentleman knows, there was industrial action at the supply depot. One stamp, the Churchill Commemorative Stamp, was delayed and the I.T.U. stamp was put at the end of the programme instead of the beginning and will therefore come out at the end of this year.

Wayleave Charges

Mr. Gurden: asked the Postmaster-General (1) what is the cost, including letter post charges, of handling payments for wayleave of very small amounts;
(2) what rearrangement he will make to pay very small items of payment for telephone wayleave; and if he will arrange credits on telephone accounts instead of posting drafts for them.

Mr. Joseph Slater: Wayleave payments of up to £5 are made by postal draft and cost some 2s. to handle, including postage. To arrange a credit on telephone acounts would, at this stage, be an undesirable complication of our billing procedures, and cannot yet be proved to be a cheaper alternative.

Mr. Gurden: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that this cost of 2s. is involved in the issue of many thousands of payments of not more than 1s., one of which I have here? It is a very uneconomic procedure. Will he consider making payments over a period, for instance, of five years? Since we are all being asked to increase productivity, will not the hon. Gentleman look at his own Department?

Mr. Slater: I agree that the cost is disproportionate to the payment in some cases but this is money spent in acknowledging the co-operation of the public which we greatly appreciate, and in the aggregate it is not really much—about £9,000 a year. Many wayleave granters have waived payment altogether while others prefer regular payment, although this is not necessary, to safeguard their legal rights of property.

Postal Services (Exporters)

Mr. Bryan: asked the Postmaster-General what steps he is taking in the postal services to help exporters improve their service to customers overseas.

Mr. Benn: I understand that the hon. Gentleman has in mind delays to mail from abroad. These have been caused mainly by shortage of postal staff in this country. We have had a vigorous staff recruitment campaign and we have also taken special operational steps to relieve the most hard-pressed offices. I am glad to tell the House that, as a result of these measures, there has recently been a marked improvement in the service.

Mr. Bryan: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that my question relates to the firm of Messrs. Reginald Dickens of Harrold near Bedford, which complained about letters from America which last May took nine days; was then assured that there would be an improvement, but in September was still losing orders because of the slowness of its foreign mail? Can the right hon. Gentleman say whether he can give us any better news? It is the lack of improvement, not the situation itself, which is the biggest worry for our exporters. They have not detected any improvement yet.

Mr. Speaker: That was a long supplementary question.

Mr. Benn: As the hon. Gentleman will know, when dealing with international mail it is not only delays in this country which affect the timing of deliveries. All postal administrations suffer difficulties similar to those which we experience. However, I can say that 1,000 vacancies have been filled since May as the result of a vigorous recruitment campaign, although the Post Office will not be satisfied until the standard of services offered is satisfactory all round.

Mail (Collection Charge)

Mr. Geoffrey Lloyd: asked the Postmaster-General for what reason an extra charge is levied on firms or persons who collect their own mail.

Mr. Joseph Slater: Because the special arrangements needed to give private box and bag services or to produce mail on demand for casual callers at Post Offices involve additional expense. As announced yesterday, we shall shortly be introducing a cheaper private box service experimentally at three post offices. We are also reviewing the charge made to casual callers.

Mr. Lloyd: Can the hon. Gentleman say where those experiments are to be carried out?

Mr. Slater: Yes, Sir. They will be in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, London Western District Office, and Warrington.

Services (Regionalisation)

Mr. Kenneth Lewis: asked the Postmaster-General what plans he has for regionalising Post Office services; how many main post offices will be reduced in status in any such plan; and what will be the total manpower and financial saving.

Mr. Benn: The Post Office has been organised on a Regional basis for 30 years. Within each region the local units of management for postal and telegraph work are vested in nearly 450 Head Post Office areas. Amalgamations are made where this would lead to economy without loss of efficiency or adversely affecting services to the public. On average each such amalgamation saves about three staff and reduces costs by about £4,000 a year.

Mr. Lewis: The House might agree that the last part of that Answer somewhat contradicted the first. Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the changes which he is making to bring certain smaller towns under the control of larger towns cause a certain public reaction and that people are concerned about whether they will get the kind of personal service to which they have been used? I would like an assurance that my town of Stamford will get the same personal service which it has always had.

Mr. Benn: I am very well aware that questions of local pride and interest are involved when there is a change of this kind. For that reason it has been the custom of Postmasters-General to write to the Members concerned when such a change is to be made in order to explain that it has nothing to do with the services offered, but is purely an act of managerial amalgamation, which, for human reasons, is normally done only when head postmasters retire and a vacancy creates the opportunity. However, I must tell the House that if the Post Office management is to be as efficient in future as is required, these amalgamations will tend to go on with increasing rapidity. They will not

affect the service, but they will permit us to concentrate our administrative work in fewer centres.

Parcel Deliveries, South Shields

Mr. Blenkinsop: asked the Postmaster-General what is the average time taken in delivery of parcels from Leicester and London, respectively, to South Shields; and what is the saving of time when parcels are registered.

Mr. Joseph Slater: Parcels for South Shields from both London and Leicester should generally be delivered by the second weekday after posting. As registration involves a hand to hand check there is no saving of time when parcels are registered.

Mr. Blenkinsop: Does my hon. Friend realise that in fact parcels have been taking up to a week and even longer to get through the West End of London and that this is a matter of long standing? Will he tell me what action he proposes to take to put this right, as it is endangering the future of a number of firms in my area?

Mr. Slater: I must agree with my hon. Friend that there have been some delays at King's Cross and Newcastle Central Station and at Leicester where parcel mails for South Shields have to be transferred. We have been pursuing this matter with British Railways and it may be for the benefit of the House if I say that a new regular service plan for the parcel post was introduced on 4th October and that we expect it to effect an improvement. There are plans for easing accommodation difficulties at both King's Cross and Newcastle, but these will take some time to mature.

Postal Service (Irish Hospitals' Sweepstake Tickets)

Mr. Lipton: asked the Postmaster-General if he is aware that Irish hospitals' sweepstake tickets are sent through the post; and what action he will take.

Mr. Joseph Slater: My right hon. Friend realises that some of these tickets find their way into the post. The use of the post for their distribution in this country is prohibited and if they are found they are stopped.

Mr. Lipton: Is there any sense in maintaining this ban on the postal delivery of Irish sweepstake tickets in this country? Is my hon. Friend aware that whatever the law on the subject may be, the law is not being enforced by either the Post Office or the Home Office? In those circumstances, why should not the people of this country be free to buy Irish sweepstake tickets if they so wish?

Mr. Slater: Those may be the views and observations of my hon. Friend, but I must remind him that Section 42 of the Betting, Gaming and Lotteries Act, 1963, says that it is an offence for any person in connection with a lottery promoted or proposed to be promoted, either in Great Britain or elsewhere, to sell or distribute or offer or advertise for sale or distribution any tickets or chances in the lottery or to bring or invite any person to send into Great Britain tickets for the purpose of sale or distribution.

Hon. Members: Reading.

Mr. Slater: That covers the supplementary question which my hon. Friend asked and to which he has a right to receive an answer.

Oral Answers to Questions — WIRELESS AND TELEVISION

Television Reception (Romney Marsh)

Mr. Costain: asked the Postmaster-General what steps he is taking to improve the British Broadcasting Corporation television reception in Romney Marsh.

Mr. Joseph Slater: Improvements in the quality of television reception in particular localities are primarily the responsibility of the broadcasting authorities.
The B.B.C. tell me that though reception in some parts of Romney Marsh is poor at times, there are places where it is worse; and they must come first.

Mr. Costain: Does the Postmaster-General not agree that his letter of 9th August and his private secretary's letter of 23rd August admit that the television service of the B.B.C. is unsatisfactory on Romney Marsh? Does he not also agree that in the same letter he admits that the I.T.V. service is satisfactory? Is he satisfied with this situation? If not, will

he allow private enterprise to get on with giving an efficient television service?

Mr. Slater: The power of the B.B.C. station at Dover has to be restricted to a low value to avoid causing interference to other television stations operating on the same channel. The I.T.A. Dover station can transmit, I agree, on a higher power, according to my information, resulting in better reception on Romney Marsh. Moreover, Band III frequencies which have been allocated to the I.T.A. are less susceptible to interference from Continental stations than the Band I frequencies allocated to the B.B.C.

625-Line Programmes

Mr. Geoffrey Lloyd: asked the Postmaster-General if he will take steps to stimulate the purchase of television sets capable of receiving 625-line programmes, in view of the decision to adopt this standard, the probable eventual demand for colour television and the need to assist exports.

Mr. Benn: I am still awaiting the report of my Television Advisory committee on the choice of a colour system for this country. The probable eventual demand for colour television would not be satisfied by stimulating the sale of monochrome receivers.

Mr. Lloyd: Is it not important that a standard for colour television should be announced quickly? Can the right hon. Gentleman say when he thinks that he will be in a position to make an announcement?

Mr. Benn: I absolutely agree, but the Television Advisory Committee which has advised successive Postmasters-General on this matter is not itself agreed. As the right hon. Gentleman will know, this raises problems of extreme complexity particularly with the double-line standards which we have in this country.

Sir Ian Orr-Ewing: Would the right hon. Gentleman consider whether colour should be allowed to be transmitted on Bands I and III by the B.B.C. and I.T.A. when he makes a decision, or whether it will be limited to Bands IV and V?

Mr. Benn: The problem to which the hon. Gentleman refers is one of the problems to which the Television Advisory


Committee obviously has to give consideration and that undoubtedly is one of the reasons for the delay.

Pirate Radio Stations

Mr. Blenkinsop: asked the Postmaster-General what action he proposes to take to deal with pirate radio stations, in view of the international agreement that has been reached.

Mr. Benn: I cannot add to the information I have already given the House: that is, that legislation to implement the agreement will be introduced as soon as practicable.

Mr. Blenkinsop: Does my right hon. Friend agree that a great deal of time has been taken and that other countries have carried out the agreement? Is not this delay causing trouble not only with agreements among the trade unions, the Musicians Union and others, but also causing a good deal of damage to broadcasting on the Continent? Is it not time that we got on with it?

Mr. Benn: I am very well aware of what my hon. Friend says. In fact, four countries have carried through the legislation while another seven have not yet signed the agreement, so that our record in comparison with others is not as bad as my hon. Friend suggests. This is a matter of legislation priorities.

Mr. Robert Cooke: Will the right hon. Gentleman bear in mind that the problem might solve itself if he were to authorise some legitimate local radio stations?

Mr. Benn: A lot of problems would solve themselves if legal action were not taken against those who broke the law, but whether that would necessarily be desirable is quite another question.

Television Licences (Evasion)

Mr. Gibson-Watt: asked the Postmaster-General (1) what methods are used by his Department to discover evasion; of payment of television licences;
(2) how many evasions of payment of television licences his Department recorded in 1964.

Mr. Bean: The methods used to detect evasion are: by inquiry, conducted by

post and followed up if necessary by personal inquiry, of households not recorded as licensed; and by the use of detector cars equipped to pinpoint television sets in use.
All cases of evasion do not, of course, come individually to the notice of my Department; but I estimate that, as a result of its measures, more than 250,000 television licences were taken out in 1964.

Mr. Gibson-Watt: I thought that the right hon. Gentleman might answer those two Questions together. I would ask, first of all, why he did not answer the second Question, which was how many evasions does he believe there are at the moment? Secondly, does he agree that, as many people believe, the number of television licence evasions at the moment comes to between 25 and 30 per cent.? Would he tell us a little more about his methods of finding out about these people who fail to pay their television licences, particularly in view of what has been said in the newspapers with regard to the possibility—[HON. MEMBERS: "Speech."]

Mr. Speaker: Order. I will correct the hon. Gentleman when he is too long.

Mr. Gibson-Watt: Particularly with regard to what has been said in the newspapers recently about the possibility of the Government haying in mind the raising of the licence duty?

Mr. Benn: It was mot possible to answer in detail Question No. 25 because the Department does not keep records of evasions. We prosecuted 22,000 people last year and 250,000 television licences were taken out. These give some indication. We obviously cannot know, by definition, exactly how many evasions there are. Television Audience Measurement say there are about two million offenders. That would be £10 million out of £70 million licence revenue. So even T.A.M.'s estimate is quite different from the hon. Gentleman's figures. They are still extremely serious and I am considering other measures.

Mr. Lubbock: In view of the fact that evasion is so widespread, as the replies of the Postmaster-General indicate, involving £10 million out of a total of £70 million, would he not consider introducing legislation which would require a television retailer to see a licence from


a potential purchaser before he sells him a television set?

Mr. Benn: This and other suggestions are being examined.

Oral Answers to Questions — TELEPHONE SERVICE

Public Call Boxes, London (Stolen Instruments)

Mr. Gresham Cooke: asked the Postmaster-General how many telephone instruments have been stolen from public call-boxes in the London area this year; and what further steps he will take by way of electric warning bells or otherwise to safeguard such public property required in emergencies.

Mr. Gower: asked the Postmaster-General how many telephone kiosks in England, Scotland and Wales, respectively, are now out of order owing to vandalism; and what new steps he will take to deal with the problem which has arisen.

Mr. Joseph Slater: During January to September, 1965, about 10,000 telephone handsets have been stolen or damaged in public call-boxes in London. In England, about 2,600 out of a total of about 57,000 boxes are now out of order owing to vandalism; 60 out of 6,800 in Scotland and 110 out of 6,000 in Wales; but many of these are available for emergency use. My right hon. Friend is stepping up measures to safeguard our equipment, which in some cases include warning signals.

Mr. Gresham Cooke: Is it not shameful that these telephone sets should be ripped out of the boxes? It is maddening for someone wanting to make an emergency call to find an instrument unusable. Could the Post Office not install a simple form of light or bell, like a burglar alarm, which would be set off in the nearest police station if the circuit were broken by vandalism?

Mr. Slater: I am indebted to the hon. Gentleman and to the hon. Member for Barry (Mr. Gower) for bringing this matter to the notice of the House and giving me an opportunity to reply. Telephone kiosks cannot be made indestructible and the deplorable situation revealed by the amount of damage will eventually be overcome only when a solution is

found to the problem of vandalism in general. I will write to the hon. Gentleman telling him in detail of what we are doing.

S.T.D. (Companies' Notepaper)

Mr. Gresham Cooke: asked the Postmaster-General when he will be in a position to encourage companies, at least in the larger cities, to put their subscriber trunk dialling code on their notepaper for the convenience of their callers, as is done in countries abroad.

Mr. Benn: Quite soon. When all-figure numbering is introduced early next year, I hope that subscribers in the six largest cities will show their STD numbers on their notepaper. This will be of great convenience to their customers and will help the Post Office.

Mr. Gresham Cooke: Will the right hon. Gentleman take special steps to encourage companies to do this? Is he aware that in America every company shows its area code and its number on its notepaper so that there is no need to refer to the directory when one wants to telephone?

Mr. Benn: That is so. The hon. Gentleman has asked a very helpful supplementary question. One of the difficulties of the telephone service is that people are reluctant to use the directories, with the result that directory inquiries become overloaded.

Trunk Calls, Grimsby

Sir C. Osborne: asked the Postmaster-General if he is aware of the delays in getting trunk calls through to the Grimsby area; if he will see that more lines are made available in the near future; and if he will make a statement.

Mr. Benn: The general quality of trunk service in the Grimsby Area is good. But if the hon. Gentleman has any particular difficulties in mind, and will let me know details, I will make inquiries. There is no shortage of lines.

Sir C. Osborne: Is not the right hon. Gentleman aware that he has been misinformed about this matter? In all friendliness, may I ask him why during the last 12 months all postal services, letter delivery and telephones, seem to


have deteriorated so much? Whose fault is it?

Mr. Benn: The latter question goes beyond that on the Order Paper. If the hon. Gentleman thinks that I have been misinformed, he will be pleased that I have invited him to write to me on this matter. The information available to me is that three out of the eight circuits between Grimsby and Leicester came out of action as a result of a fault on 30th September and were corrected on the same day, while engineering work took place at Leicester last month and has now been completed. The director of this region has not reported general complaints about this, which is why I have invited the hon. Gentleman's view.

Oral Answers to Questions — AGRICULTURE, FISHERIES AND FOOD

White Fish Authority (Minimum Price Scheme)

Mr. Wall: asked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if he will make a statement about his discussion with the White Fish Authority about a statutory minimum price scheme.

The Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Mr. Fred Peart): I have asked the Authority for further information in support of their request for Exchequer assistance for a scheme.

Mr. Wall: Is the Minister aware that the White Fish Authority has recently criticised the Government for their delay in reaching a decision? Can the Minister say whether he intends to introduce a statutory minimum scheme, and if so, when he is going to give us details?

Mr. Peart: The hon. Member knows the details about this. Actually if one reads the speech of the Chairman of the Authority carefully I would not call it a criticism. He did say in his speech that the present time was an awkward time for seeking such assistance.

National Plan (Australia and New Zealand)

Mr. Peter Mills: asked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if he will make a statement on his official discussions in Australia and New Zealand, with particular reference to the Govern-

ment's proposals as outlined in the National Plan.

Mr. Peart: I was invited by the Governments of Australia and New Zealand primarily to see something of their agriculture, not to conduct official discussions. Naturally I met Ministers and others who raised questions informally on a wide range of matters, including the rôle of agriculture under the National Economic Plan. I was able to assure them that there was no intention of indiscriminate expansion regardless of our international commitments. But I made it clear that our policy of selective expansion, based on greater productivity, would provide the British farmer with an opportunity to supply a major part of the overall increase in demand expected by 1970.

Mr. Mills: I have heard what the Minister says on this matter. Many of us feel that there has been a certain amount of double-talk in what he said out there. Would he not agree that the British farmer has the right to know what proportion of this extra production he is going to be allowed to take up? Would he not also agree that the Commonwealth farmer also has the right to know? Would the Minister bear in mind that longer-term planning is needed to get this extra production, and we would like to have the figures?

Mr. Peart: I refute the accusation of double-talk. I made my position and the Government's policy quite clear—that the British farmer would make a major contribution to the production of more food in this country to meet the increased demand by 1970. I was quite firm with my audiences there. I am on the record officially, and I would invite the hon. Member to read my official pronouncement which I made in New Zealand. I hope that the hon. Member will withdraw that accusation of double-talk.

Mr. Scott-Hopkins: Has not the Minister promised the same thing for the home producers and the producers in Australia and New Zealand, namely, an increasing share of the rising demand in this country? How can he possibly square that with giving the home producers the major part?

Mr. Peart: How can I promise both things to both sections? I have said that


the British farmer will make the biggest contribution and will contribute the major share in the growth that I have mentioned. I am rather surprised that the hon. Member should make a game of such a statement.

Oral Answers to Questions — SCOTLAND

White Fish Subsidy (Inshore Vessels)

Mr. G. Campbell: asked the Secretary of State for Scotland whether he will introduce a single rate of payment of white fish subsidy to inshore vessels, in view of the anomalies now arising from the two systems of stoneage and daily rates, or alter the present method of classification by measurement.

The Minister of State, Scottish Office (Mr. George Willis): The method of payment of white fish subsidy to the inshore fleet was considered in the last subsidy review, but my right hon. Friend is willing to look at the question again and to consult the fishermen's associations about it.

Mr. Campbell: Is not the system now producing anomalies and difficulties, and is the Minister aware that two boats can receive different payments for similar catches and that, owing to the present method of measurement, the smaller boat can be classified as the larger one of the two?

Mr. Willis: I am aware of these anomalies and I have discussed them with the fishermen. The matter is not quite so simple as it might seem. The fishermen themselves have differing views about this, but we are prepared to look at it again, and will do so.

Oral Answers to Questions — MINISTRY OF DEFENCE

Defence Policy (Review)

Mr. Wall: asked the Secretary of State for Defence, if he will make a statement on the Government's review of defence policy.

The Secretary of State for Defence (Mr. Denis Healey): At this stage I have nothing to add to the statement which I made to the House on 5th August.

Mr. Wall: Can the right hon. Gentleman say when he intends to make a statement and whether it will be in the form

of a White Paper, or whether the present form of allowing leak after leak to occur, in order to make it more palatable, will be followed?

Mr. Healey: I can assure the House that when I am in a position to do so I shall make a statement that is both clear and agreed by my colleagues, unlike the defence review statement of the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Powell), which has been corrected or rejected by every single member of the Conservative Shadow Cabinet, including the Leader.

Mr. Shinwell: In view of the varying views on defence expressed in all quarters of the House, including some rather strange views recently expressed, can we have an assurance that, before the Government come to definite conclusions upon the subject of defence, the House will have an opportunity of being heard and being able to express its views? Can we be assured that there will be no fait accompli?

Mr. Healey: I think my right hon. Friend knows that it is not possible to spend money on defence without getting authority from this House. I can assure the House that it will have an opportunity to discuss the decisions of the Government when they are taken.

Mr. Powell: Following what the right hon. Gentleman has just said, does the Secretary of State realise how difficult it is, both for the House and for the country, to form a judgment on the individual decisions which he has been announcing for some months, on the subject of defence, without having any knowledge of the tendency and trend of the Government's defence review, or any forecast of when they are to know what their decisions are to be?

Mr. Healey: I am surprised at the right hon. Gentleman's remark, because the right hon. Gentlemen opposite seem to have no difficulty in reaching decisions on the wisdom of all the decisions we have taken in the last 12 months.

Mr. Powell: When will the right hon. Gentleman realise that he is here to answer Questions and not to ask them?

Mr. Frank Allaun: Is the Minister aware that, unlike most of those opposite,


many of us on these benches want far bigger, not smaller, cuts in our arms expenditure than at present proposed? Is he aware that we feel that the figure of £2,045 million at current prices, stated in the National Plan for 1970, means an increase of about £2,400 million a year, which is too much for this country to afford?

Mr. Healey: I think that my hon. Friend is over-pessimistic about the trend of prices and incomes during the next four years. I can assure him that the target which the Government have set themselves involves a cut of 16 per cent. in the programme that we inherited from the previous Administration.

Territorial Army (Reorganisation)

Mr. Murton: asked the Secretary of State for Defence what plans he has for discussing with the Council of Territorial and Auxiliary Forces Associations the reorganisation of the Territorial Army.

The Deputy Secretary of State for Defence and Minister of Defence for the Army (Mr. Fred Mulley): Discussions between the Council and the Ministry of Defence have been going on for over two months within the framework of my right hon. Friend's statement to the House on 29th July and the subsequent joint statement issued following my right hon. Friend's meeting with the Chairman of the Territorial Army Council on 12th August.

Mr. Murton: Is it not a fact that there have been some delays in the discussions? Will the right hon. Member bear in mind the serious disquiet which is reported to be felt by the Territorial Army Council, and which is shared by many hon. Members, at the lack of a home defence element in the proposed scheme? Will he reconsider this scheme, with a view to incorporating a home defence element in it?

Mr. Mulley: As my right hon. Friends and I have said many times, we are anxious to have the maximum consultation with the Territorial Army Council and Associations within the framework that has been described, which was accepted by them on 12th August. As to the question of home or civil defence, at this stage I cannot add to my right hon. Friend's statement to the House on

29th July. My right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary will make a statement when the current review of home defence is completed.

Mr. Crawshaw: Is my right hon. Friend aware that many people in the country who have certain information on this matter of reorganisation view it as destruction rather than as reorganisation? Will he take into account the possibility of ensuring that his advisers in this matter have at least some knowledge of the Territorial Army?

Mr. Mulley: I am sure that my hon. Friend does not wish to make an attack upon the Regular Army advisers involved. I am paid to be in this House and to be attacked in it, but I very much resent any attacks on the military or civil advisers to any Minister, since Ministers must take responsibility. My right hon. Friend and I do so.

Sir T. Beamish: As the Minister knows, the Opposition are very critical both of the timing and the contents of the outlined proposals so far made. Can he tell the House, first, when the detailed proposals will be available in a White Paper and, secondly, whether we may have an assurance that no irrevocable decision will be made about the pattern and rôle of the Reserve Forces until these detailed proposals, and, far more important, the principles underlying them, have been debated in this House?

Mr. Mulley: It has already been made clear that no irrevocable decision can be taken, because legislation will be needed to make any alterations in the present pattern of the Territorial Army. As to timing, my right hon. Friend made an interim statement before the House rose, in response to a great deal of speculation which was causing concern in the Territorial Army—there was some anxiety that the position should be clarified—and also in response to many requests by both Front Bench and back bench Members that a statement should be made before we rose for the Recess. We hope to get a White Paper out in November or early December, but to some extent progress has been held up because of the need to confer as fully as possible, on the order of battle and similar matters, with the Territorial Army Council and Associations. This has


involved a few weeks' delay in publishing the White Paper, in order that we may go into these questions with the Council.

Singapore (Defence Commitments)

Mr. Tilney: asked the Secretary of State for Defence if he will make a statement on Great Britain's defence commitments to the State of Singapore.

Mr. Healey: Our commitments remain unchanged in practical terms, for we have already made clear our readiness to continue to help in defending Singapore and Malaysia against Indonesian aggression. In formal terms our obligation to Singapore was previously covered by the Malaysia Agreement of 1963, and there must be negotiations with the Singapore Government in due course to re-establish our defence relations on a formal basis.

Mr. Tilney: Can the right hon. Gentleman state whether or not this will cost the British taxpayer considerably more?

Mr. Healey: Since negotiations have not yet begun, I am unable to give any assurances on this, but it certainly would be the Government's intention not to be involved in any extra cost as a result of the renegotiation of the agreement.

F111A Aircraft

Mr. Hugh Jenkins: asked the Secretary of State for Defence what would be the cost of ordering the F111A aircraft from the United States in sufficient quantity to fulfil existing defence obligations east of Suez.

Mr. Healey: The flexibility of air power means that in calculating numbers of any aircraft and, in consequence, costs, we can allow for the ability to reinforce quickly from the U.K. or between overseas theatres. It is not, therefore, meaningful to look at any one particular area in isolation from the rest.

Mr. Jenkins: Does my right hon. Friend agree that if the cost of carrying out the present obligations was beyond the resources of this country the right thing to do would be to review the obligations rather than to overstrain our resources?

Mr. Healey: I certainly agree about that. That is one of the reasons why the

Government are carrying out the defence review.

Sir A. V. Harvey: Can the Minister confirm that the F111A, which he mentioned in the summer, is for training purposes only, and does not measure up to the requirements of a replacement for the TSR2?

Mr. Healey: No. The F111A, on which the Government have an option, which they have not yet decided whether to exercise, is an operational aircraft of exactly the same nature as the United States Air Force is planning to introduce, and in all respects it is comparable with the TSR2.

Mr. Powell: Can the Minister say which is likely to happen first—the announcement of the Government's decision to purchase this aircraft or the running-out of the option at the end of the year?

Mr. Healey: The former.

Corps of Infantry

Mr. Murton: asked the Secretary of State for Defence what study he is conducting into the advantages and disadvantages of forming a corps of infantry; if he will pay full regard at an early stage to the views of colonels of regiments; and if he will make a statement.

Mr. Mulley: No such study is in hand. As is generally known, the policy of the Army Board is to move towards the Large Regiment as the basis of infantry organisation. The first such regiment, the Royal Anglian Regiment, was formed in September, 1964, and the Royal Green-jacket Regiment will come into being in January next year. These Large Regiments have been formed as a result of voluntary action, and I would welcome the move of other brigades towards a similar organisation.

Mr. Murton: As such a proposal would strike at the whole root of the infantry regimental system, should this ever occur will he give an assurance that the House will have a chance to debate it before the decision reaches an irrevocable stage?

Mr. Mulley: I have already made it clear that this proposal is not in the mind of the Army Board at present. While no one can foresee the future completely on the question of Army organisation, I think


it is unlikely that such a proposal will be forthcoming in the next year or two, but if there is such a question, I am sure that the House will have much to say about it.

Oral Answers to Questions — COURT EVIDENCE (MEDICAL PROFESSION)

Mr. Derek Page: asked the Minister without Portfolio if he will introduce legislation to ensure that the privacy of the doctor-patient relationship is not infringed by courts.

The Minister without Portfolio (Sir Eric Fletcher): As I said in answer to a Question by the hon. Member for Oxford (Mr. Woodhouse) on 23rd December last, any extension of the rules governing privilege so as to cover the medical profession is a matter which comes within the scope of the Law Reform Committee's current review of the law of evidence. It would be better to await the outcome of that review before considering any change in the law.

Mr. Page: Does my hon. Friend realise that many doctors and patients are concerned about the difficulties arising from the possibility of their being questioned in court and the possible deleterious effect of this on the diagnosis and treatment of disease? Will he make sure that this is fully appreciated in the right quarters?

Sir Eric Fletcher: I am well aware of the concern felt by members of the medical profession on this subject. They have made representations to the Law Reform Committee, which I am sure will be taken carefully into consideration.

Oral Answers to Questions — TRANSPORT

Heavy Lorries (Spot Checks)

Wing Commander Sir E. Bullus: asked the Minister of Transport how many heavy lorries have been spot checked by his Department since this scheme of safety checks was inaugurated; how many were found to be defective; and what steps he has taken against the offenders.

The Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Transport (Mr. Stephen Swingler): In the two years up to the end of September, during which spot checks have been intensified, about 239,000 goods vehicles have been

checked. Prohibition notices were issued for about 108,000 of these. These prohibit the use of a vehicle unless it is repaired within a set period. Where necessary, the prohibition is made immediately effective and this was done in 25,000 cases.
The licensing authorities may suspend the carriers' licences of operators whose vehicles are repeatedly found defective. Owners and drivers may also be prosecuted in appropriate cases.

Sir E. Bullus: Are not these figures truly alarming? Would the Minister tell us what steps he has taken to ensure that the gravest sanctions are applied to these criminal offenders?

Mr. Swingler: These figures are very serious. That is the reason why my right hon. Friend has decided to extend obligatory testing to heavy goods vehicles and why plans are now being prepared for the introduction of that scheme. At the same time, a substantial number of summonses has been issued in relation to this. Up to the year ended 30th September, 1964, which is the latest for which I have figures, over 4,000 summonses were issued and prosecutions were mostly successful.

Mr. Snow: In the meantime, will my hon. Friend read carefully the evidence given at Stafford Assizes a few days ago in the case of the prosecution against John Brown, where there was a serious loss of life, including four children, in an accident in which the driver was held by the court to be criminally responsible?

Mr. Swingler: We will pay serious attention to that. We are continually examining these reports and we know how urgent it is to make this system more effective.

Mr. Webster: Will the Parliamentary Secretary say to what extent the licensing authorities have, in recent months, been encouraged to use their powers of revocation and suspension under the 1953 Act? What steps is he taking to make an impression upon these people to use the powers which already exist?

Mr. Swingler: The licensing authorities have been using their powers increasingly. We shall certainly take any steps we can in order to make this system more effective, pending the introduction of annual testing.

Nationalised Transport Industry (Delivery Delays)

Mr. Wingfield Digby: asked the Minister of Transport whether he is aware of the difficulties caused to exporters as a result of delay in the delivery of essential goods by the nationalised transport industry; and if he will have a special study made of the problem.

Mr. Swingler: The Government have already established the Economic Development Committee for the Movement of Exports to make proposals to speed the flow of export traffic. This will study all aspects of the problem and all sectors of the transport industry concerned with exports.

Mr. Wingfield Digby: Is the Parliamentary Secretary aware of a particularly bad case in which a sample export order to the United States Navy from my constituency was lost? Subsequently his right hon. Friend closed the station of despatch, which is hardly likely to speed the flow.

Mr. Swingler: I do not know the particular case to which the hon. Gentleman refers, but I can tell him that if he submits any such cases to us, we guarantee to investigate them with whoever is the appropriate transport operator. We are extremely keen to take all possible action to speed the export traffic.

Mr. H. Hynd: Does the Parliamentary Secretary accept the implication of this Question, that these delays are solely due to the nationalised transport industry?

Mr. Swingler: No, Sir. My hon. Friend is quite correct. The Committee to which I referred is not solely concerned with the nationalised sector of transport, nor are all the complaints directed against the nationalised transport industry.

Roundabouts ("Give Way to the Right" Notices)

Mr. Cordle: asked the Minister of Transport whether it is his policy to extend the provision of Give Way to the Right notices at roundabouts as common practice throughout the country in order to encourage and enforce this practice by all drivers.

Mr. Swingler: Both for safety and the flow of traffic this is an important matter and my right hon. Friend will make a statement on the results of the recent comprehensive experiments as soon as he can.

Mr. Cordle: Does the Parliamentary Secretary agree that these discretionary "Give Way to the Right" notices often lead to confusion and sometimes give rise to accidents, especially when drivers consider that they have the right of way at all roundabouts and anticipate it? Would it not be beneficial to write this into the Highway Code, so as to achieve uniformity throughout the land?

Mr. Swingler: It has not been found so easy to come to a definite conclusion about this matter in the past. That is why an experiment has now been carried out with these signs at 80 roundabouts. We are now within a few weeks of the end of the experiment, when the results will be known, and a definite statement will be made by my right hon. Friend early next year. If this statement accepts what the hon. Gentleman is referring to, we shall, of course, incorporate it in the Highway Code.

Driving Tests (Television Programme)

Mr. Costain: asked the Minister of Transport what assistance was made available by his Department to the British Broadcasting Corporation for the production of the British Broadcasting Corporation television programme on 24th August concerning driving tests; and if he will take further similar steps in order to encourage better driving.

Mr. Swingler: The Department helped to frame questions for this excellent programme and were glad to have the opportunity of checking the filmed sequences to ensure that they complied with both the law and good driving practice. We are at present assisting and advising the B.B.C. on a further programme. We are anxious to encourage the screening of programmes which promote more skilful and safer driving and the B.B.C. and the Independent Television Companies can rely on the full co-operation of the Department.

Mr. Costain: Is the Parliamentary Secretary aware that many people who thought that they were very good drivers learned a lot from this programme and that the country will be delighted to know that he is encouraging programmes of this sort as good television viewing?

Mr. Swingler: Certainly, Sir. We want to encourage this kind of film as frequently as possible. There was a large number of complimentary references to it in correspondence received by the Ministry of Transport. We are now co-operating with the B.B.C. on a new programme of a similar kind.

Vehicle Check-Points, Great North Road

Sir Harmar Nicholls: asked the Minister of Transport whether he will instruct his officials to suspend the operation of vehicle check-points during periods of fog in areas where such checks cause a vehicle queue to be formed such as was the case on the Great North Road, near Alconbury, on Tuesday, 5th October, 1965, on the occasion of an accident involving several vehicles.

Mr. Swingler: There was no vehicle check near Alconbury on 5th October. It seems that the hon. Member has been misled by an incorrect press report about a check carried out on the A.1 on 4th October between 8 a.m. and 3 p.m. in clear weather. We are satisfied that our officials and the police who are associated with these spot checks need no special instructions to avoid carrying them out in conditions likely to affect road safety.

Sir Harmar Nicholls: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that I shall check the source of my information to see which is correct?

Transport Problems (Lord Hinton's Report)

Mr. Mapp: asked the Minister of Transport if he will now publish the recent report of Lord Hinton on transport problems.

Mr. Swingler: No, Sir. As was explained to my right hon. Friend the Member for Derby, South on 16th June, any report arising from Lord Hinton's studies will be made in the form of a

statement by my right hon. Friend to Parliament.

Mr. Mapp: Why cannot we have the report in question? Although many of us may be quite unconcerned about the conclusions, at least students of transport should have the facts which may be contained in that report. Would he consider publishing an abridged version of the report, so that all the facts adduced in it may be made available?

Mr. Swingler: The answer to my hon. Friend is that my right hon. Friend appointed Lord Hinton as a temporary adviser on transport co-ordination for a limited period. Lord Hinton was therefore operating as a civil servant and, therefore—as is normal in such cases—his advice is confidential to my right hon. Friend. My right hon. Friend will be making a statement as a result of the work of Lord Hinton in the near future.

Sir M. Redmayne: Will the Parliamentary Secretary say whether in fact there was any report at all? Will he accept it from me that the earlier the statement is made the better we shall be pleased?

Mr. Swingler: As is well known, Lord Hinton completed a number of studies. It is quite inaccurate to refer to the report as if there were a single report. He completed a number of studies on the basis of instructions given to him by my right hon. Friend. On the basis of the assessment of these studies, my right hon. Friend will be making a statement on transport co-ordination in the near future.

Mr. Speaker: Order. May I congratulate the House on improving its record of Questions completed at Question Time?

Oral Answers to Questions — ROADS

A.31, Ringwood-Tricketts Cross

Mr. Cordle: asked the Minister of Transport when the double carriageway between Ringwood and Tricketts Cross on A.31 will be completed; and whether it is proposed to improve the Bournemouth approach road from Ferndown on A.347.

Mr. Swingler: I expect this stretch of the A.31 to have dual carriageways in


about three years' time. The A.347 is a classified road for which the highway authorities concerned plan only small improvements at present. The proposed Ringwood-Bournemouth Spur will provide a new alternative route.

Mr. Cordle: The Parliamentary Secretary is apparently not aware that the A.347 is carrying the brunt, if not most, of the holiday traffic and is dangerous, narrow and winding. In view of the number of accidents in Hampshire, I should have thought that this ought to have primary consideration for improvement.

Mr. Swingler: I appreciate the point about the situation now. The fact is that we have adopted the proposal for the new Ringwood-Bournemouth spur as an alternative route, in order to relieve the A.347. This has already been programmed at a cost of £1,800,000 and is something which will, we hope, relieve the congested situation which we know now exists.

Thorne By-pass

Mr. George Jeger: asked the Minister of Transport why he has postponed the commencement of the Thorne by-pass, in view of the increasing traffic congestion on the A.614 and the need to facilitate access to the docks.

Mr. Swingler: The alignment of the southern end of the Thorne by-pass will need to be modified as a result of the decision to provide a Doncaster Southern by-pass as part of the proposed new trunk road network between Humberside and the Great North Road. Preparatory work is continuing with all speed, but I do not now expect that work on the Thorne by-pass can start before 1968.

Mr. Jeger: Is my hon. Friend aware that this has caused considerable dismay in the neighbourhood, that there has been congestion at this point in Thorne for many years and that we were looking forward to some dynamic action on the part of the Minister of Transport?

Mr. Swingler: My hon. Friend will get dynamic action with the programme which we have adopted for the Humberside network, which includes an improvement scheme for this area. However, we have run into engineering difficulties in regard to the proposed Thorne by-pass and that is why the scheme has been

altered, but the delay in starting it will be only very short.

Humberside Network

Mr. George Jeger: asked the Minister of Transport whether the new plans for the improvement of the Humberside network include the Hatfield by-pass.

Mr. Swingler: The network includes a new route which will by-pass Hatfield.

A.1 (Dual Carriageway)

Sir R. Russell: asked the Minister of Transport when the dualling of the Hertfordshire sections of A.1 between South Mimms and Hatfield, and Hatfield and the southern end of the Stevenage bypass is to be started; and when he expects the work to be completed.

Mr. Swingler: We have just authorised the letting of a contract for the construction of a 2-mile stretch of dual carriageway on the A.1 at Stanborough, north of Hatfield. This work should be completed in about two years' time. We hope to include schemes for the dualling of the A.1 from "The Comet" to the South Mimms by-pass, and from the northern end of Stanborough By-pass to "The Clock", Welwyn, in an early extension of the trunk road programme.

Sir R. Russell: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that this is about the only substantial stretch of the A.1 between London and the other side of Darlington which does not have a dual carriageway? Will he do his utmost to expedite the work and close this gap in an otherwise excellent road?

Mr. Swingler: Yes, Sir. We want to speed this work as much as possible.

AIRCRAFT ACCIDENT, LONDON AIRPORT

Mr. Stodart: (by Private Notice) asked the Minister of Aviation whether he will make a statement on the accident last night at London Airport to an aircraft from Edinburgh, as a result of which 36 people lost their lives?

The Minister of Aviation (Mr. Roy Jenkins): A Vanguard belonging to British European Airways, on a flight from Edinburgh to London, crashed at


Heathrow on Runway 28 Right early this morning in low visibility. There were 30 passengers and six crew, and I regret to say that there were no survivors. Preliminary information suggests that the pilot, having made two previous approaches to land, had announced his intention of again overshooting. I have decided that a public inquiry shall be held into the causes and circumstances of the accident.
The whole House will, I know, wish to join with me in expressing sympathy with the relatives and friends of all those who have lost their lives in this tragic accident.

Mr. Stodart: I thank the Minister for that information. As the Member in whose constituency Turnhouse airport lies, and as one who has suffered the loss of constituents in the air crash—as no doubt have other hon. Members—may I add on behalf of the House my sympathy with the relatives of the passengers and of the staff and with everyone who has been touched by the disaster, the horror of which is magnified, I believe, when one remembers the scores of journeys which hon. Members have made in perfect safety and comfort on this airline.
May I ask the Minister one question arising out of what he said—and I have no desire whatever to trespass on the ground which the inquiry will cover. He mentioned the low visibility at the time. It was stated in one of the morning newspapers that, according to a witness of the crash, visibility was limited to no more than 110 yards. Whether that is correct or not, and in order to allay anxiety in the immediate future, will the right hon. Gentleman say what the minimum visibility is for a landing at London Airport and whether this minimum is being scrupulously observed?

Mr. Jenkins: I am grateful to the hon. Member for what he said in the early part of his question. The minimum applied by B.E.A. for this type of aircraft for landing is 350 metres. This is a matter which the public inquiry will look into, but I have no reason to think that the pilot was operating below this limit.

Mr. Rankin: Is my right hon. Friend aware that it is stated in one of our leading newspapers this morning that there was an engineering block on the runway, and, of course, the implications

of that are obvious. Would my right hon. Friend inquire into that forthwith? Secondly, is he aware that the carrying capacity of the Vanguard is 139 passengers? In view of the potential disaster involved in a crash today, would he forthwith see that there is a careful re-scrutiny of the precautions and regulation which apply at the point of take-off and the point of landing?

Mr. Jenkins: Of course, we shall bear all these points in mind, but I think that it would be wrong to view this tragic accident alone and not to see it in the context of the outstanding safety record both of London Airport and of the airlines themselves. Having ordered a public inquiry, which I think is right in these circumstances, I am naturally inhibited in what I ought to say at this stage, but there is no indication at all that there was any obstacle on the runway which could have been a contributory cause.

Mr. R. Carr: We should all like to associate ourselves with the sympathy with the relatives of those who have lost their lives. May I welcome the fact that the Minister has ordered a public inquiry in this case? I think that that will give great reassurance to the public at large. May I confirm that the inquiry itself is to be in public and that the findings of the inquiry will also be published in due course? May I ask the Minister about our current position regarding the revision of the Warsaw Convention as it affects compensation for the victims a air crashes? Has that change been made and will there, therefore, be any benefit in this case? May we assume that the dependants of the crew who so sadly lost their lives will be adequately taken care of under the normal B.E.A. regulations?
Finally, it appears from reports that, although unfortunately they could be of no avail to the tragic victims, the fire services and other rescue services were on the spot with remarkable rapidity, and I feel sure that we should like to congratulate them on that.

Mr. Jenkins: The inquiry will be a public inquiry, conducted in public and leading, of course, to a public report. I should prefer notice of the question about the detailed position with regard to the Warsaw Convention. The dependants of the crew will, I am sure, be looked after in accordance with the normal provisions


of B.E.A. I am very glad indeed to confirm what the right hon. Gentleman said about the rescue services. The fire services were on the spot of the crash within one minute of impact, which was a very remarkable performance.

Mr. Woodburn: As one who saw and experienced the conditions at London Airport earlier in the day, when coming from Edinburgh, may I ask whether, in the study of the causes of this accident, my right hon. Friend will inquire carefully into how long pilots were on duty yesterday under terribly trying conditions? From observation, it would seem possible that pilots were reaching the point of exhaustion, especially at 4 a.m. When I consider the careful way in which pilots normally act, may I ask my right hon. Friend to inquire whether under those conditions the pilots may have been overstrained by the tremendous length of their day?

Mr. Jenkins: This will be one of the matters which will be most carefully looked into by the public inquiry, but fog and delays of the sort which occurred last night are not unusual in air operations over this country, and I believe that B.E.A. and other airlines take these into account in seeing that the pilot's day does not exceed the maximum laid down.

BILL PRESENTED

HONOURABLE LADY HYLTON-FOSTER'S ANNUITY

Bill to settle and secure an annuity upon Audrey Pellew Hylton-Foster, commonly known as the Honourable Lady Hylton-Foster, in consideration of the eminent services of her late husband, the Right Honourable Sir Harry Braustyn Hylton Hylton-Foster, presented by the Prime Minister; supported by Mr. Bowden, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr. MacDermot, Mr. Heath, Mr. Grimond, and Mr. Turton; read the First time; to be read a Second time tomorrow and to be printed. [Bill 209.]

DEATH OF MR. SPEAKER HYLTON-FOSTER

Mr. Speaker: Before I call the Minister to move the Motion, I have to acquaint the House that, on the death of the late Speaker, messages of sympathy were received from the following legislative authorities and their presiding officers:

The Legislative Council of Aden
The National Senate of the Argentine Republic
The Chamber of Deputies of the Argentine Republic
The House of Representatives of Australia
The National Assembly of Austria
The Landtag of Bavaria
The National Assembly of Basutoland
The National Assembly of Bechuanaland
The House of Assembly of British Guiana
The House of Commons of Canada
The House of Representatives of Ceylon
The House of Representatives of Cyprus
The Legislature of Eastern Nigeria
The Legislative Council of Fiji
The Parliament of Finland
The National Assembly of France
The Bundestag of the Federal Republic of Germany
The National Assembly of Ghana
The Legislative Council of Grenada
The Althing of Iceland
The Lok Sabha of India
The House of Keys of the Isle of Man
The Knesset of Israel
The Senate of Italy
The Chamber of Deputies of Italy
The House of Representatives of Jamaica
The House of Representatives of Japan
The House of Representatives of Kenya
The National Assembly of Korea
The Parliament of Luxembourg
The Parliament of Malawi
The House of Representatives of Malta
The Legislative Assembly of Mauritius
The House of Assembly of Mid-Western Nigeria
The Legislative Assembly and Council of Mysore
The Panchayat of Nepal
The Second Chamber of the States General of the Netherlands
The Legislature of Northern Nigeria
The Storting of Norway
The National Assembly of Pakistan
The Parliament of Paraguay
The Diet of the Polish Republic
The Parliament of Rhodesia
The Grand National Assembly of the Republic of Roumania
The Legislative Council of Saint Vincent
The Legislative Assembly of Saskatchewan
The Parliament of Sierra Leone
The Cortes of Spain
The Parliament of Sudan
The National Assembly of Togoland
The National Assembly of Tunisia
The National Assembly of Turkey
The National Assembly of Uganda
The Council of the Union and the Council of Nationalities of the Supreme Soviet of the U.S.S.R.


The Legislative Assembly of West Bengal
The National Assembly of West Pakistan
The Legislature of Western Nigeria
The Federal Assembly of Yugoslavia
The National Assembly of Zambia.

Messages were also received from a number of Governments and other organisations and their officers as follows:

The Government of Buchuanaland.
The Canadian Area Conference of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association.
The Gujarat Branch of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association.
The Political Committee of the Council of Europe.
The Secretariat of the Council of Europe.
The Government of Korea.
The Luxembourg Embassy.
The Conference of N.A.T.O. Parliamentarians.
The Government of Tanzania.
The Assembly of the Western European Union.

Replies have been sent to all these messages; I propose to have the texts of the messages placed in the Library, and I should like to express the appreciation of the House.

DEATH OF MR. SPEAKER HYLTON-FOSTER

3.42 p.m.

The First Secretary of State and Secretary of State for Economic Affairs (Mr. George Brown): It falls to me, in the absence of my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, to move the Motion on the Order Paper:
That this House records its deep regret at the sudden death of the Right Honourable Sir Harry Hylton-Foster, Q.C., Speaker and servant of this House; acknowledges the debt owed to him for the six years during which he devoted his authority, dignity and wisdom to the high office he held; recognises, as a fitting tribute to his memory, his constant and unremitting service to the House and the Members thereof and the fairness, wit and ability with which he carried out his duties; and, conscious of her own special contribution to the Parliamentary scene, offers to Lady Hylton-Foster condolences in her tragic loss.
It is obviously unnecessary for me to say that my right hon. Friend would have wished to have been here to move the Motion himself. He is very sorry that he is not here to move it.
The Motion indicates the sense of personal loss which came to all of us with the news of the death of Harry Hylton-Foster, our last Speaker. It was not only the outstanding impression which he made in his occupancy of the Chair. It was

that he always appeared, and indeed was, a friend to everyone of us. So it is as a friend that we mourn his passing. Indeed, we do more than mourn. We do something quite different. We applaud and acclaim him and his achievements. He occupied the Chair for more than six years, and each year that passed increased our respect of his judgment and deepened our admiration for the way in which he could so often turn anger into laughter.
It was said of a previous Speaker that he owed much of his success to the great love which he had for his fellow hon. Members. Harry Hylton-Foster had all of that and many other attributes besides. He came to the Chair with already a distinguished legal career behind him. For five years he held the post of Solicitor-General, and he discharged his duties in the House with courtesy and charm, even, as I well remember, when times were at their most trying.
As Speaker, elected after a conflict, he did more than justify himself to us. He proved himself to be one in whom the quality of good fellowship was there however the official exterior might have to look at any particular moment. Yet, although we all saw him as a friend, the relationship was never such that the Chair ever lost any of its dignity. He gave us faithful guidance, allowing much time and thought to the judgments which he had to pass and the decisions which he had to make. He never spared himself. Perhaps I may be allowed to say that those of us who sat nearer to him than others could on many occasions see as well as sense the intense strain which many of those occasions imposed on him.
There are many here who came new to this House after 1959 who will feel the sense of personal loss more deeply than most. They found how much help was readily given by Mr. Speaker as they sought their way through the strange paths which our procedure so often takes. Whatever their party, whatever their views, Harry Hylton-Foster, in the Chair or in the relaxed atmosphere of his room, was willing to put his great knowledge and experience at their service. I can personally testify to the enormous help which I received when sitting on the Opposition benches; I was not only seeking my way through the procedural paths but also trying to see whether I could test their elasticity a bit.
At all times he was a doughty champion of the liberties and privileges of the House. He was not a man easily roused to passion, but any attack on our rights found him immediately on guard, while being exceedingly steady whenever he felt that we might be pushing those rights a little too hard. We can truly say of our late Speaker that he had in full measure the respect, confidence and friendship of his fellow hon. Members.
I cannot resume my seat without expressing a word of sympathy for Lady Hylton-Foster, whose loss is a heavy one indeed. We all know Lady Hylton-Foster and are well aware of the great help which she gave her husband. I am sure that I speak for all hon. Members when I say that we are therefore all the more pleased at the news that we shall still see her around the place and that, from now on, she will be able to make her voice heard in her own right in another place.
Lady Hylton-Foster has the tremendous distinction of being both the daughter of a very good Speaker and, later, the wife of a very good Speaker. This is not only a great distinction; it also suggests quite a bit of managerial capability. But, certainly, she came for the second time to the Speaker's House with a wealth of knowledge which no other woman could have. He was a fortunate man, indeed, to have such a helpmate. Tomorrow, we as a House hope to show our appreciation in a more practical way. Today, Sir, our sympathy goes out to her in her most grievous loss.

3.51 p.m.

Mr. Edward Heath: On behalf of my right hon. and hon. Friends, I should like to support the Motion which has just been so eloquently moved by the First Secretary. We, too, share the grief and the sense of personal loss which he has expressed. The late Speaker was a friend, a close friend, of so many of us, and we mourn him deeply.
In October, 1959, his proposer, in moving his election as Speaker, stressed how important it was that he was of an age where his health and strength could bear the heavy burden of the Speaker-ship. Alas, those onerous duties which the First Secretary has just described, and the diligence with which he always attended to them, proved more than even his health could stand. We remember

him here today as back bencher, charming the House with his eloquence; as Solicitor-General, impressing us all with his fairness in debate and his courtesy to Members in all parts of the House, and we remember him as Speaker.
His qualities have often been enumerated, and the First Secretary has mentioned many of them this afternoon. I would only add a word on a few. His appearance and his bearing well became the dignity of the House. His almost limitless patience was often demonstrated to us. His legal training and experience led to clarity in his rulings, and his wit and humour often spiced our proceedings and speedily reduced tension. I think, looking back, that this wit was more to the fore during this present Session than ever before. Connoisseurs of Parliamentary humour will find many delightful examples in the OFFICIAL REPORT of the last year. But I think that the main characteristic for which some of us will remember him was his intense belief in conciliation. This was really the basis of his whole political philosophy, and it was that belief which governed his actions.
We know how much he was helped by his wife, and we are grateful to her for the part she played so graciously here in the Palace of Westminster. To her we extend in fullest measure our deepest sympathy. We also welcome the conferment of a life peerage on her yesterday. It will, as the First Secretary said, not only enable her to maintain her connection with Westminster but also to contribute to the discussions in another place on those matters of social welfare in which she has always taken a very close interest.
We are too close to recent events to be able to offer any judgment on the place the late Speaker will occupy in our Parliamentary history. I would only say this. In his speech submitting himself to the House in 1959, he used these words:
I cannot claim the qualities which, in their kindness, they bestow upon me, but I can and do claim this: that I love and revere this House—its long history and the gay vigour of its modern life; the good humour, most of the time; the friendships it makes; the quick changes of mood: the sure collective judgment of this House about a man—this House, an institution so much greater than the sum of all of us of whom at any one time it is composed."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 20th October, 1959; Vol. 612, c. 15.]


It was in that spirit that he served this House so well. He will be long remembered as Speaker by those who had the privilege of sitting under him.

3.56 p.m.

Mr. J. Grimond: All deaths of those with whom we have been intimate, even deaths coming after long illness, ultimately come as a shock, but we suffered a peculiarly severe shock when we read that Sir Harry Hylton-Foster had quite unexpectedly dropped dead in the street.
As the First Secretary has mentioned, Sir Harry Hylton-Foster's election as Speaker was not without some controversy. That, I think, made it all the more remarkable and all the more to his credit that he so soon established his command of the House and his regard in the hearts of its Members. The wit, which has been frequently remarked on, was always relevant and never wounding. He was dignified in public and friendly in private. We came to look upon him as a friend and as a Speaker firmly established in our lives and one who was to be with us for many years to come.
Now he is taken from us, and we can do no more than record our deep sorrow and send our sympathy to his widow. I should like also to join in the congratulations that have already been offered to her upon her life peerage and simply to say that, on behalf of the Liberal Party, I beg to support the Motion.

3.58 p.m.

Mr. R. H. Turton: It is difficult for me to speak to this Motion because for 47 years my life and that of Sir Harry Hylton-Foster were closely intertwined. We went to the same school at the same time. We entered the same set of chambers at the Bar. For 15 years I had been with him in this House, and for nine years he represented a neighbouring constituency. In passing, I can say how assiduous he was in looking after his constituents in York. He put the interests of his constituents before any other.
Out of that experience, I would draw to the attention of the House three qualities in his character—his modesty, his loyalty and his sacrifice of self. I give two illustrations. At the beginning of the war in 1939 Sir Harry was a very busy junior

at the most critical moment of his career. Without any hesitation he threw aside his career, joined the Air Force, and served overseas in North Africa and Italy as Deputy Judge Advocate General.
In 1959, as has been referred to before, he was asked to be Speaker of this House. At that time he had a very high reputation as Solicitor-General. He, and I think the whole House, thought that in time he would gain his ambition and become Lord Chancellor of England. Yet he accepted the office as Speaker, knowing that that was the end of his ambition, because he believed that he should discharge his duty to the House if its Members so wished.
As back benchers we have realised how well he upheld the rights of minorities, how scrupulously fair he was, how patient, to a fault.
As the First Secretary said, he could calm the House with a witty phrase. I remember, in particular, the way in which, at a time of ceremony, he could show by his humble and human dignity the greatness of his office, and I would remind the House of the proceedings when we commemorated the 700th Anniversary of Parliament. I remember, in particular, a private dinner party which Mr. Speaker gave to the Speakers of the Commonwealth Parliaments and how, with humour and humility, he described to those Commonwealth Speakers what he conceived to be the way in which a Speaker should discharge his duties.
We remember him as a friend, as a man who sacrificed his legal career for Parliament, and as a man who served his country loyally.
As has been previously mentioned, at this time our hearts go out to his widow. In all my years in the House, I have never known any Speaker's wife who listened more assiduously to the debates in the House or who entertained and received us with such grace and charm in the Speaker's House. Surely that was, as again the First Secretary said, as befitted her as the daughter of one Speaker and the wife of another. However, I hope that her grief will be tempered by the knowledge that the whole House which she and the late Speaker presided over and served extends to her its sympathy and affection, and that she will realise that


we regard her and her late husband as two great Parliamentarians.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved, nemine contradicente,
That this House records its deep regret at the sudden death of the Right Honourable Sir Harry Hylton-Foster, Q.C., Speaker and servant of this House; acknowledges the debt owed to him for the six years during which he devoted his authority, dignity and wisdom to the high office he held; recognises, as a fitting tribute to his memory, his constant and unremitting service to the House and the Members thereof and the fairness, wit and ability with which he carried out his duties; and, conscious of her own special contribution to the Parliamentary scene, offers to Lady Hylton-Foster condolences in her tragic loss.

Message from the Lords

Mr. Speaker: I have to acquaint the House that a Message has been brought from the Lords by one of their Clerks, as follows:
The Lords have come to the following Resolution, nemine dissentiente, namely, "That a Message be sent to the House of Commons to express the deep sorrow of this House on the loss which the Commons have sustained by the death of their Speaker, who will long be remembered with affection and regard for the distinction with which he discharged the duties of his office, and to express the profound sympathy of the House for Lady Hylton-Foster in her bereavement.

Mr. George Brown: I beg to move, "That the Lords Message be considered."

Question put and agreed to.

Lords Message considered accordingly.

Mr. George Brown: I beg to move,
That this House wishes to convey its thanks to the House of Lords in appreciative acknowledgement of their sympathy occasioned by the death of Mr. Speaker Hylton-Foster.
I am sure that it would be the wish of the entire House that I should convey that Message to the House of Lords. I am confident, too, that Lady Hylton-Foster will wish to be associated with that acknowledgement.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved, nemine contradicente,
That this House wishes to convey its thanks to the House of Lords in appreciative acknowledgement of their sympathy occasioned by the death of Mr. Speaker Hylton-Foster.

To be communicated to the Lords.

PROCEDURE

Mr. Speaker: Before we proceed with the debate, might I mention to the House that there are many hon. Members who wish to speak in it. It is a debate which we shall all be studying. It will be of great assistance if as many hon. Members take part as possible, and I would urge hon. Members to be concise in the contributions that they make.

4.8 p.m.

The Lord President of the Council (Mr. Herbert Bowden): I beg to move,
That the Reports of the Select Committee on Procedure and the Second Report from the Select Committee on Procedure in Session 1963–64 be now considered.
Before discussing the Reports of the Select Committee on Procedure which have been presented to the House in the current Session, I am sure that the House would wish me to thank the Chairman and Members of his Committee for the work they have done and their diligence to the tasks set them.
I am afraid that the special instructions given to the Select Committee from time to time and our requests to them for priority advice led to some interruption of their more general reviews of problems such as the hours of sittings of the House. Whilst I cannot promise that we shall not ask the Committee for some more urgent reviews in the next Session—and I am making one or two suggestions today—I hope that we shall not unduly disturb their more general considerations.
May I now turn to the separate Reports. The First Report from the Select Committee on Procedure suggests a Second Reading Committee similar in some respects, but not in all, to our current procedure for the Scottish Grand Committee, the idea being to make a recommendation to the House whether a Bill should or should not be read a Second time. In that way, it is hoped that the Second Reading Committee would save the time which would otherwise be taken on the Floor of the House for Second Reading debate of that particular Bill. Such a procedure would mean that many Bills of a "non-controversial" character could be added to the Statute Book, and many desirable Bills for which no Government are ever prepared to find the time could be introduced.
The recommendation from the Select Committee is that the Second Reading Committee should be composed of anything between 30 and 80 members, but a minimum of 20 objectors rising in their places could stop the procedure being used at all. Implementation of the recommendation could achieve a big saving of time on the Floor of the House. But, in the past, in discussing similar procedures, there has always been difficulty in defining "non-controversial" and "unopposed" Measures. The suggested procedure which is now before us avoids that difficulty, because it is left to the House itself with 20 Members rising to decide whether the House would wish a Bill to be considered in that way or not.
The proceedings in the Second Reading Committee would consist of a Motion made by the Member in charge of the Bill, "That the Committee recommend that the Bill be read a second time". That Motion would be capable of amendment, so that the Committee could recommend against Second Reading and also so that its reasons for recommending against Second Reading could be reported to the House. On the other hand, in cases agreed by the Second Reading Committee, the question for Second Reading would come before the House for approval without debate. Members of the Second Reading Committee would be appointed by the Committee of Selection in the normal way and subject to the usual conditions. As an additional safeguard, ten days' notice would be given on the Order Paper of the intention to refer a Bill to the Second Reading Committee, and there would be, as is normal, discussions through the usual channels as to the suitability of treating a particular Bill in that way.
At that stage, if the Opposition of the day felt that the Bill ought not be treated in this way and the Government of the day felt that it ought, it would be very easy for the Chief Opposition Whip to persuade 20 hon. Members to stand in their places. There is no real difficulty there, but having brought the Bill back to the House after the deliberation of the Second Reading Committee, on a recommendation that it be read a Second time and the approval of the House to that Motion having been given without debate, the Bill would then continue its following stages, Committee, Report and Third Reading precisely as a Bill does

today. This is the first proposal by the Select Committee on Procedure in its First Report.

Mr. Sydney Silverman: There is one point on which I am not clear. Does the Minister who moves this Motion have to be the Minister in charge of the Bill concerned, or can a Minister move it in respect of any Bill?

Mr. Bowden: It would normally be the Minister in charge of the Bill. I perhaps ought to have said at an earlier stage that it would be a Public Bill, not a Private Member's Bill.
The second proposal from the Select Committee on procedure in its First Report dealt with the—

Sir John Langford-Holt: The right hon. Gentleman said that this would apply only to Public Bills and not to Private Members' Bills. Did he mean Private Bills?

Mr. Bowden: I appreciate that a Private Member's Bill is, of course, a Public Bill, but it is not felt that we should offer the procedure to Private Members' Bills and incorporate them in this new idea at this stage.
The proposal from the Select Committee on the question of sittings of the House is left very open. It will be recalled that we asked the Committee to look at this problem. It did briefly look at it and some evidence was taken, but the Committee decided to return to it in a further Report. The more one looks at this problem—and I know that we are all anxious to avoid late sittings and get on with the business of the House—the more difficult it becomes. The Select Committee on Procedure has promised to consider this in a further Report.
The Committee next looked at the question of Ten Minute Rule Motions. As the House will know, this is a procedure whereby a Private Member is free on Tuesdays or Wednesdays, under the current Standing Order No. 13, to ask leave to bring in a Bill. This can mean that if the Bill is opposed by a speech of ten minutes' duration and a Division takes place at that stage at 3.30 in the day on Tuesdays or Wednesdays, we can take up to 40 minutes of the time of the House before the normal business of the House proceeds. That 40 minutes


can also mean the exclusion of two hon. Members from the general debate which would follow.
The proposal is that by way of an experiment the Ten Minute Rule Motion should be taken at the end of Business rather than at 3.30. Standing Order No. 13 was substantially changed in 1960 following a recommendation of the Select Committee which then recommended that there should be only one Ten Minute Rule Bill—previously there were more—and that seven days' notice should be required. This is operating at present, but despite this the number of Motions has increased very considerably.
In 1958–59, the full Session following the Report after which we decided to restrict the number to one Bill, there were in fact 13 Ten Minute Rule Motions. In the full Session of 1963–64 there were 40 and in the current Session so far there have been 33. As the House is aware, if leave is given to bring in a Bill under this procedure the Bill takes its place in the queue with other Private Members' Bills which have been drawn in the Ballot. In the current Session, although private Members' time has ended, we had an example of Early Day Motions being moved for leave to bring in a Bill which, if such Bill had been brought in in Private Members' Time, would not have had time available to go through their stages.
When, as is often the case, Standing Order No. 13 is used, not for bringing in a Bill but merely for seeking publicity for a particular topic, although the House may decide to continue the practice, it is in fact an intrusion of one hon. Member at the expense of the rest of the House. As I have said, it can exclude two hon. Members from the general debate. It does not prevent the Government or the Opposition for they get full time for the debate. It is thought that such intrusions could be eliminated by changing the time in the manner suggested by the Select Committee and taking Ten Minute Rule Motions at Ten o'clock at night.

Mr. William Shepherd: Can the right hon. Gentleman tell the House how many Ten Minute Rule Bills in the past have got on to the Statute Book?

Mr. Bowden: I am not absolutely sure, but I think that in the last full Session there were three.
The Second Report by the Select Committee dealt with Question Time—

Mr. Leslie Hale: Will my right hon. Friend forgive me for interrupting? I apologise, but I had to leave the Chamber in order to get a Paper and was kept waiting for it. I know that my right hon. Friend remembers very well the Report of the Select Committee in 1959, which referred to this as a very jealously-guarded right which should be retained and which should be preserved. The Committee to which he is now referring was almost mandated on the subject in a curious way.

Mr. Bowden: I have very much in mind the Report of the 1959 Committee—in fact I quoted it—but I am suggesting that, while a Private Member gets nothing easily, he would have his Motion considered later in the day when it would not be likely to prevent other hon. Members from speaking in the general debate.

Mr. Hale: I apologise for interrupting again. I do not often do this nowadays. Apparently no one has mentioned—my right hon. Friend has not—that the private Member would get the opportunity at a time when any hon. Member can count the House out, destroy his Bill and leave him to go through the whole miserable process again without there being time for him to get the Bill through.

Mr. Bowden: This will be taken into consideration, but on balance I still think it worth while accepting the recommendation for a year. Then we can look at it again and, if desired, put the present procedure back again.
Let us look at the second recommendation, on Question Time. I think we are all agreed that hon. Members often have to wait a month, which is too long, before they can get a reply to an Oral Question. We have not been reaching as many Questions each day as we should like to reach. Thirdly, there is a growing habit among hon. Members that, whatever the form of the Question, they must ask a supplementary question. They regard it as something quite wrong if they do not rise in their places and ask supplementary questions.
Fourthly, and probably most serious of all from our point of view, there is pre-emption of the Order Paper by hon.


Members putting down Questions weeks and weeks ahead, which from their point of view may be very important, but which in fact mean that they are taking priority over other hon. Members and regardless of what may happen during those weeks these particular Questions have to be answered before more current and topical Questions can be taken. If one looks at the Order Book and compares its size today with that of a few years ago, one sees that the number is astronomical. For instance, in March, 1963, there were 551 Questions on the Order Book for Oral Answer. Two years later, in March, 1965, there were 1,149 Questions down for Oral Answer. The figure has doubled in two years. This is the sort of thing which mill continue to grow.
My main complaint about this preemption of the Order Book is that it is unfair to many Members. It could equally be argued that everyone could engage in it. However, if we all engaged in it the Order Paper would be so thick that it would need two people to carry it into the Chamber.
The general complaint is that fewer Questions for Oral Answer are being reached. This is attributed to the length of Questions and supplementary questions and, to some extent, to the multiplicity of Questions with slight variations in phraseology on the same subject. I am aware that this is largely a matter for the House. I have quoted in the House on a number of occasions the position 25 years ago as compared with the position today. There has been practically no change in the length of the original Answer by the Minister and of the first supplementary question, but there has been a very considerable change in the Minister's answer to the first supplementary question and in the second supplementary question to the Minister. This is where we seem to be losing ground.
The Committee recommends, first, that forward notice should in future be limited to 21 days, exclusive of adjournments other than weekend adjournments; secondly, that deferred Questions should be treated as new notices and should not have precedence; thirdly, that there should be a Resolution of the House expressing support for Mr. Speaker in

applying steps to increase the number of Questions answered and to control abuse of supplementary questions; fourthly, that each Member should be limited to eight Questions for Oral Answer a month; and, fifthly, that the rota organisation should give a greater proportion of time to the larger Departments.
The Motion tabled in my name secures a limit of 21 days with the object of preventing pre-emption of the Order Paper. Because of that, it is necessary to alter the present priority given to deferred Questions over Questions tabled on the day of deferment, to prevent evasion of the 21 day rule. Therefore, if a Question were deferred, it would not take precedence over other Questions already on the Order Paper. It would not be necessary to amend the Standing Orders to deal with this, since the priority rests only on the practice of the Table Office. Mr. Speaker might, therefore, if the House wishes, be invited to give the necessary' instruction to the Table Office to put this recommendation into effect directly the Standing Order amendment were agreed to.
This change would be necessary if the 21 days' notice recommendation were adopted, but there is a slight difficulty here with regard to transferred Questions. It is not a Member's fault if the Table Office or a Department transfers a Question from one Department to another. It is felt that, if a Question is transferred by a Department or by the Table Office, whichever is responsible, the Member should not be penalised and that that Question should retain its original priority.
As to the proposed Resolution to be passed to support Mr. Speaker, I should think that perhaps the House would not now wish to proceed with this so soon after the appointment of a new Speaker. It might however, be considered later on if we feel that it is necessary. Very largely the solution to this problem is in Members' own hands.
The suggestion of limiting Members to eight Questions a month seems to me to be an unnecessary restriction on Members and, in addition, a very difficult one to work. The House might wish to see what effect the present debate has in leading Members to accept self-imposed discipline


which would make such limitation as to eight a month unnecessary.
The Question rota is normally arranged through the usual channels and although, here again, there may be virtue in running the rota very much on its present lines until Christmas to see whether Questions speed up, we can make changes at any time. I have said on a number of occasions that I like the present system, which was agreed by me as then Opposition Chief Whip, of not having two days a week for any one Department. In practice this has worked extremely well. The figures show that no Department has lost as a result of it and Members have not lost. The turnover comes up reasonably quickly. If it is felt that it is necessary to change it, I am sure that the usual channels would be prepared to look at it again. In fact the usual channels do look at the Question rota at least four times every year.
In addition to the proposals recommended by the Select Committee, I would hope that the House would be willing to consider preventing Members from tabling more than two Questions for Oral Answer for any one day, any additional Questions being automatically treated as Questions for Written Answer. Moreover, should a Member withdraw one of his Questions for Oral Answer in favour of another Question, the new Question should not take the precedence of the withdrawn one but should take its normal place. This is purely a recommendation to the House which has not been dealt with in any procedural Motion before us now. It is something which might be considered. The House will recall that there is at present a limit of two Questions for Oral Answer to be asked on any one day, but this does not prevent more from being tabled. Last July one Member tabled 12 such Questions and none was reached. I raise this for future consideration simply because the preparation of Answers to Oral Questions costs about £3 per question more on an average than Answers to Questions for Written Answer. In the interests of economy and other things, I think that this proposal may commend itself to Members.

Sir Harmar Nicholls: How is the figure for the difference in cost arrived at? This has always puzzled me. If the figure is accurate it may

weigh very heavily in favour of Members accepting the recommendation.

Mr. Bowden: This is a matter which I would prefer not to discuss across the Floor of the House, because it is extremely complicated. If the hon. Gentleman would care to see me afterwards, I could produce to him a chart which I studied for half an hour and which I found difficult to understand. The truth of the matter is that the average cost of preparing a Written Answer is under £5. The average cost of preparing an Oral Answer is about £7. There are Answers which cost as much as £150. I am not suggesting that this is wrong, if Members want the information. If a Member tables 12 Questions and it is only possible to take two of them, there is some saving if the other ten are treated as Questions for Written Answer. There is a saving financially. There is also a saving of the time of the Department which has to collate the required information.

Mr. R. T. Paget: Is it more expensive to answer a Question for Oral Answer than a Question for Written Answer simply because more care is taken in providing the Answer?

Mr. Bowden: That is a very attractive suggestion, but in fact the reason for the difference is that Questions for Oral Answer have to be answered more quickly. One can sometimes get the information in a more leisurely fashion to reply to a Question for Written Answer. To secure the information for an Oral Answer, particularly on Colonial or Commonwealth Affairs, cables have to be used and telephone calls made. On average, the expense is precisely what I have said that it is.
The Third Report from the Select Committee deals with methods of expediting Finance Bills and makes a recommendation. This is not a unanimous recommendation. It is that an attempt should be made to draft the Finance Bill in such a way as would take account of the desire of the House to commit at least some of its provisions to a Standing Committee upstairs rather than their being taken on the Floor of the House.
The second proposal was that a Select Committee of the House, a sort of Business Committee, should recommend which provisions and new Clauses of the Finance


Bill should be committed to a Standing Committee upstairs. The third proposal was that the Business Committee should recommend a timetable for the consideration of the whole Bill. This is not a new step. It has been looked at by Select Committees on Procedure on two occasions before. The 1962 and 1963 Select Committees who looked at the problem were firmly against such a proposal even as an experiment. I have personally held the view, and I am on record as believing, that a Business Committee could be set up to deal with most Bills. It would be a Committee which would be set up at the beginning of the Session to which at the request of the House the Bills could be referred for timetabling purposes, but I have always been doubtful—and I have said this and it is in the evidence which I gave before the Select Committee—whether this should be applied to Finance Bills.
The timetable for the Finance Bill—for the Budget Resolutions—is extremely hemmed in by Statutes. Hon. Members who have had experience in government will know that the Provisional Collection of Taxes Act, 1913, the Parliament Act, 1911, and the Parliament Act, 1948, definitely restrict the Government of the day in timing from the point of view of the Finance Bill. It would be very difficult under present arrangements to accept a proposal that a reasonable time should be allowed between the Second Reading of the Finance Bill and the commencement of the Committee stage while the Business Committee made recommendations about the timetable.
Any division of the Finance Bill into budgetary or administrative sections is also extremely difficult. It is difficult to decide which Clauses of the Finance Bill are of such limited interest that they could be sent to a Committee upstairs, and it is difficult to argue, if there is not such a limited interest, that they should be sent upstairs rather than be considered on the Floor of the House. I have had research done into the recent Finance Bill, which the House will recall was not exactly a short one. It is thought that perhaps 3 per cent. only of that Bill could be regarded as administrative matter which could be taken upstairs.

Mr. Julian Snow: Is not there some merit in considering the general proposition that if

when a Finance Bill is being drafted by the appropriate Departments and sub-Departments it is drafted in the light of its being split into two separate divisions there might be more scope for the proposal?

Mr. Bowden: I have looked at that point too. The Parliamentary draftsmen whose job it would be to divide the Bill in this way—and they are greatly experienced—find it difficult to decide which would be budgetary and which would be administrative. If the House wished to timetable Finance Bills it could do it. Machinery already exists under Standing Order 43, which during the past few months, as the House will appreciate, I have read on more than one occasion.
The Fourth Report of the Select Committee deals with the question of how best to carry out detailed examination of Estimates.

Mr. Donald Chapman: Does what my right hon. Friend has just said mean that he is turning down the whole of the proposals of the Committee on Procedure for expediting the Finance Bill? Does it mean that all our efforts to try to find a way of preventing our having to be here night after night and our view that this is the only possible reform with a chance of agreement are being turned down?

Mr. Bowden: Yes, Sir, it means precisely that, but I am recommending this to the House on the basis of recommendations to the House by the two previous Select Committees on Procedure, and on the basis of the fact that this recommendation by the present Committee was by no means unanimous. I am recommending that we cannot possibly find a way out of our difficulties at the moment other than by carrying on as previously in view of the fact that the three Acts which I have quoted would seriously handicap the handling of the Finance Bill at that time of year.
The first of four proposals is that the new type of Select Committee be set up, as a development of the Estimates Committee, with new terms of reference which would enable the Committee
to examine how the Departments of State carry out their responsibilities.


The Select Committee on Procedure has expressed its anxiety that the proposed new Committee, which is a development of the Estimates Committee, should not lead to an encroachment into the field of policy. A number of witnesses who gave evidence, as the House will know, thought that it might do just that. The real question is whether or not we want to develop a system of specialist committees, not exactly like, but something akin to, the American Congressional Committees and similar committees which exist in certain European countries, or whether we feel that the proper place for policy discussions, as distinct from financial administration, is on the Floor of the House. With the best will in the world, I am afraid that once the terms of reference are widened as suggested—and I know that the Select Committee on Procedure was anxious to avoid this—the necessary detailed examination of Government expenditure and administration is bound to give place to policy discussions. In addition to that, we should lose a valuable part of the procedures on financial control.
The Government are prepared to consider the Select Committee's proposal, and I will listen carefully to today's debate, but as the Select Committee on Procedure has not itself discussed the method and lines of procedure of its proposed new Committee, I would recommend to the House that the terms of reference of the Estimates Committee should remain unchanged at present.

Mr. A. J. Irvine: On this important point, I think that it was the generally felt view of the Committee that the test of the administrative efficiency of a Department was not satisfied merely by the test of value for money, the test posed by the question whether a particular Department was economical in its operation. As I understood it, it was felt that there was a wider question which could be usefully investigated by a specialist committee going beyond the question to which I have just referred but not encroaching upon policy. Will my right hon. Friend indicate to the House—on what I repeat is a very important matter—whether the Government are disposed to agree with us on principle on that point? If objection were taken to the terms of reference which are being

put forward that would be well understood, and it obviously is a subject for further discussion, but on the principle of the matter to which I have referred, will my right hon. Friend indicate the Government's view?

Mr. Bowden: I have said that the Government are prepared to consider this and look at it, but they are very anxious that the development of the Estimates Committee should not get into the position where discussion of financial control and keen scrutiny of the expenditure of Departments is lost and replaced by policy discussions. My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Liverpool, Edge Hill (Mr. A. J. Irvine) said quite frankly—and it is contained in the Report—that the Committee was anxious not to do that, but we find it very difficult to know how one can avoid it.
It has been suggested that the terms of reference which apply to the Committee on Nationalised Industries might be adopted. But these things are by no means on all fours, and one would be in great difficulty, I think, if the proposed new form of Committee, in discussing the activities of a particular Department, say, the Foreign Office, got bogged down in some aspect of foreign affairs instead of dealing with the administration of the Department, which would be its real function. This is the difficulty, and I think that one has to be very careful about it.
My mind is by no means closed. We are prepared to look at it again, and to continue to look at it. For the time being, when we set up the Estimates Committee in two or three weeks' time, it will be my hope that we can proceed with our present terms of reference, accepting one or two other proposals which the Select Committee felt would help.

Mr. William Hamilton: Will my right hon. Friend refer to the answer to Question No. 24 given by, I think, the Clerk-Assistant, when he was asked about the proposed widening of the terms of reference?
He replied:
It may be a little wider, Sir; I do not know that it is much. I think it would be very difficult to give terms of reference which would give an absolutely clear-cut division"—
that is, between policy and non-policy.


Can my right hon. Friend give a more convincing reason than he has hitherto why we could not, as an experiment, give this extension to the terms of reference which was advocated by the Clerks of the House and by other well-informed people outside?

Mr. Bowden: My hon. Friend has called in aid the Clerk-Assistant. The Clerk-Assistant said that he himself would find it difficult to define policy and administrative decisions. This is the whole thing. A considerable amount of evidence was given on this point. The House may like to re-read the evidence on the point given by the Head of the Civil Service, who is very learned in this matter, too. I have not a closed mind on the question, but it is not an open and shut case, it is not black and white, All I am suggesting is that, for the time being at least, until we are absolutely sure, we should not change the present terms of reference.
The second proposal on the Estimates Committee coming from the Fourth Report is that the new Committee which it is suggested should be set up should function through Sub-Committees specialising in various facets of Government activities. The Government are of opinion that this is a matter for the Estimates Committee. There is nothing whatever to prevent the Estimates Committee subdividing itself into Sub-Committees looking at different Departments instead of dividing itself, as it does at present, into six or seven Sub-Committees. One might have a Social Services Sub-Committee, a Foreign Affairs and Defence Sub-Committee, and so on, if that was the wish. But it is a matter for the Estimates Committee. If it regarded this as helpful and wished to do it, the Government would say, "By all means let us try it and see how we get on."
The third proposal dealt with the need for two Clerks to supervise the work of the new Committee and one full-time Clerk to each Sub-Committee, with a right to employ specialist assistance. If the present Estimates Committee, under its present subdivision or a new one, if that is accepted, would like to augment the clerical staff and employ specialist assistance, the whole question could be considered urgently at the right place, which would be the new House of Com-

mons Services Committee which it is proposed should be set up and which would have responsibility in this field, with the approval of the House—we shall be discussing it next week—and there would be no need to delay action.
The fourth proposal dealt with a problem which faces the Estimates Committee from time to time. The suggestion is that the Estimates Committee should have power to adjourn from place to place and, with the leave of the House, should be able to travel abroad when its investigations so required. At present it has been able to travel abroad only at the invitation of a particular Department, and it wishes to be free in this matter. The Government have no desire that there should be any semblance of extravagance whatever, but, on the other hand, if the Estimates Committee feels that any one of its Sub-Committees would wish to travel abroad and take evidence abroad in order to do its work, then, subject to the approval of the House—it would need a Motion—the Government would feel that this would be worth doing.

Sir Harmar Nicholls: Would the Department be forced to pay for the Sub-Committee?

Mr. Bowden: It would have authority to pay—let us put it in that way—by decision of the House.

Mr. William Hamilton: Will my right hon. Friend make quite clear that the cost of such a visit would be borne on the Vote of the Clerk of the House and not on the Vote of the Department?

Mr. Bowden: Yes, I take the point, which is very much a point which the House of Commons Services Committee would like to look at. It is important that the Estimates Committee investigating a particular point should be free of the Department in the sense that it is not being paid for by the Department.
I have one or two other points to make before I conclude. The first relates to Early Day Motions. I particularly wish to draw the attention of the House to certain developments in this part of our procedure. Early Day Motions are really requests for debates. Over the past few years—I have watched them over several years—their number has risen rapidly. While they may still technically be


requests for debates, they have developed into, and now are in fact, something quite different, and they are being tabled just for publicity purposes. It may be said that there is nothing wrong with that. So be it. If that is what the House wants, let the House have it. But it does lead to certain administrative problems. Every year since the war, they have been growing in number. While sitting here, I looked at the Order Paper and I see that we have reached No. 351 in the current Session.
The problem here is not so much a question of what we shall do about Early Day Motions. The problem is, rather, what are the printers of our Votes and Proceedings and the Clerks at the Table going to do to deal with this problem. [An HON. MEMBER: "Oh."] The hon. Gentleman says "Oh", but the position is precisely that. Early Day Motions, tabled at a very late hour, are printed in the Votes and Proceedings of the House which hon. Members expect to be available early the next morning, on their breakfast table in many cases. If this is to continue, one has to face the fact that the Votes and Proceedings will be late.
I am simply drawing the attention of the House to this matter. I am not asking for any action, but I think that it is something which the proposed new House of Commons Services Committee might look at. Already the HANSARD coverage of our debates ends at a certain point, 10 or 10.15 or thereabouts. We might face the position that, unless we take some action, the Votes and Proceedings, if we have a particularly long night, as we do on certain occasions, will be very late.
This suggestion has come from the people who are responsible for getting out our Votes and Proceedings, and, in the normal circumstances, it is something which one would refer to the Select Committee on Publications and Debates. But, under our new procedure, if the House agrees, I hope that the House of Commons Services Committee could look at it.

Mr. T. L. Iremonger: Is not this point really so fiddling as to be hardly worth making? Surely, the alternative is that, if it is not possible or convenient to print an Early Day Motion and have the Votes and Pro-

ceedings delivered to hon. Members in time, such a Motion would have to be printed the next day.

Mr. Bowden: That, of course, is the perfect answer, and I had in mind some such time as 8 or 9 o'clock at night. But it is something which ought not to be done without the House being aware of what is being done. Therefore, I suggest that the House of Commons Services Committee should look at it.

Dr. David Kerr: I should regard it as a matter for regret if the observations just made by my right hon. Friend were to go to the House of Commons Services Committee without some challenge. I should like to tell my right hon. Friend that I came to the House under the impression that we held our powers pre-eminent and we could not be dictated to by the convenience of the printers or by others if the House had determined on a particular course of action. I could not accept the suggestion put by my right hon. Friend to the House.

Mr. Bowden: I take my hon. Friend's point, of course. I was simply pointing out that there is a difficulty. When we have our new procedure, and when the House of Commons Services Committee is functioning, we shall, I think, have a number of these questions to consider. The Committee ought to consider them. I also feel that no action whatever should be taken without the House itself being acquainted with the action which it is proposed to take.
There is another minor procedural matter to which I should like to refer. The Select Committee on Procedure in the 1963–64 Session—this is outside the four Reports that we are discussing—recommended in its Report that Select Committees should have a power to decide whether embargoed copies of their Reports should be issued to the Lobby 24 hours before publication. It further proposed that no Press conferences should be held until after publication and that the former practice of issuing confidential summaries of the contents of the Reports should be discontinued.
These recommendations have much to commend them. The present procedure is that the Report from the Select Committee is laid in dummy, after which the Clerk of the Committee is empowered to


discuss with the Lobby journalists the headlines of the Report, and then the Report is published and sometimes a Press conference takes place. The Select Committee was of the opinion that there would be great value to Select Committees if after the Report has been laid in dummy the Lobby could be provided with an embargoed copy so that by the time the Report is published the members of the Lobby will have had ample opportunity of studying it. It is felt that this could be helpful. This, if it is approved by the House, would require a Resolution of the House, which is now before hon. Members. It is a unanimous recommendation from the Select Committee, and it is on the Order Paper today, and I am drawing it to the attention of the House at the request of one of our Select Committees which feels that it would be helpful to it.

Mr. Michael English: Would my right hon. Friend refer to the last two lines of the Motion? I think that possibly these are so drafted as to prevent a Report being published during the Adjournment of the House, which at present it is possible to do. If this is carried today, I wonder whether he would consider an Amendment on this small point.

Mr. Bowden: Yes, Sir. I am well aware of the point. It has been looked at. It is not absolutely certain that my hon. Friend's point is right, but if it is necessary to put the word "sitting" between "two" and "days" this can be done at a later stage.
May I now sum up our proposals arising out of the Reports of the Select Committee on Procedure? I suggest that we should provide that Questions should not be tabled more than 21 days ahead—this requires a change in our Standing Orders—and that, because of that, deferred Questions should not have priority. In addition, we should have Sessional Orders, thus making any changes that we make as a result of today's debate experimental rather than permanent. The proposals are that there should be a Second Reading Committee for public Bills, that Ten Minute Rule Motions should be taken at the conclusion of Government Business on Tuesdays and Wednesdays instead of at 3.30 as at present, and that the Estimates Committee should, if it wishes, divide

into Sub-Committees representing spheres of Government activity but under existing terms of reference.
The fourth recommendation is that, subject to the approval of the House, members of the Estimates Committee may travel abroad if their investigations prove it to be necessary. The fifth recommendation is that Select Committees should be given the power to decide whether Reports should be issued to Lobby journalists 24 hours before publication, Press conferences not being held until after publication and no confidential summaries of the contents of the Reports being issued.

Mr. Ronald Bell: What does the right hon. Gentleman mean by "publication" in this context? Does he mean that the Committee should report to the Press before reporting to the House, or does he mean the general release of the document to the general public other than Members of the House?

Mr. Bowden: The procedure at the moment, as the hon. Gentleman is aware, is that the Report is first laid in dummy. The suggestion is that, after the laying of the Report, when the Report is printed and it has been decided to publish it on a certain day, two days before that the Press shall be given an embargoed copy which will enable them more closely to study the Report—as the hon. Member will be aware, this happens very often with many publications—and that on or after publication a Press conference shall be held. This is the unanimous suggestion of the 1963–64 Select Committee. It has been requested by a Select Committee, and I think it would be helpful.
Those are the Government's proposals arising out of the four Reports. Before I sit down, I should like again to thank the Select Committee for the terrific amount of work which it has undertaken during the present Session.

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Samuel Storey): I suggest to the House that it would be convenient to discuss with this Motion the four other Motions standing in the name of the right hon. Gentleman and that they should be put formally at the end of the debate:
That this House, taking note of the Reports of the Select Committee on Procedure of 1964–65, approves the amendment to


the Standing Orders of this House set out in the following Schedule.

SCHEDULE

Amendment to Standing Orders

Standing Order No. 8

Paragraph 5, line 38, after "circumstances", insert—
(5) Notice of a Question shall not be given for oral answer on a day later than 21 days after the date of the notice.
In reckoning the period of 21 days, no account shall be taken of any period during which the House stands adjourned for more than two days.

That for the Session 1965–66 the following paragraphs shall have effect:—

(1) when any public bill has been printed, a Motion, of which not less than ten days' notice has been given, may be made by a Minister of the Crown at the commencement of public business, that the bill be referred to a Second Reading Committee, and the Question thereupon shall be put forthwith and decided without amendment or debate; and if, on the Question being put, not less that twenty Members rise in their places and signify their objection thereto, Mr. Speaker shall declare that the Noes have it.
(2) a Second Reading Committee shall be a Standing Committee consisting of not less that thirty nor more than eighty members, to be nominated by the Committee of Selection to serve on the Committee during the consideration of each bill referred to it; and in the nomination of such members the Committee of Selection shall have regard to their qualifications and to the composition of the House.
(3) a Second Reading Committee shall report to the House whether or not they recommend that such bills ought to be read a second time; and they shall have power to state their reasons for recommending that a bill ought not to be read a second time.
(4) the terms of a Second Reading Committee's report shall be stated on the Order Paper beneath the order for the second reading of the bill; and the Question for the second reading of such a bill shall be decided without amendment or debate.

That for the Session 1965–66 Standing Order No. 13 (Motions for leave to bring in Bills and nomination of Select Committees at commencement of public business) shall have effect with the following modification, namely, that any such notice of motion, instead of being considered at the commencement of public business, shall stand over and may not be moved until after a member of the Government shall have signified to the Chair his intention to move "That this House do now adjourn", for the purpose of bringing the sitting to a conclusion; whereupon Mr. Speaker shall immediately call upon the member who has given notice of the motion to move that motion, and if the proceedings thereon have not been concluded at Ten o'clock he shall not interrupt them at that hour; and the Motion for the adjournment

of the House shall not be moved until after the conclusion of those proceedings.

That this House approves the Second Report from the Select Committee on Procedure in Session 1963–64; that during the Session 1965–66 all Select Committees shall have power to authorise the Clerk of this House to supply copies of their Reports to officers of Government Departments and to lobby journalists after those Reports have been laid upon the Table; that, when the Chairman of a Select Committee has been ordered to make a Report to this House, he shall not immediately lay the Report on the Table, but shall do so not more than two days before the publication of the Report.

4.57 p.m.

Sir Martin Redmayne: In view of Mr. Speaker's appeal for brevity in this debate, it is fortunate that the first sentence in my notes says that I may have many theories about the procedures of this House but the one which I am sure is correct is that most speeches are too long. I shall, therefore, try to conduct myself with reasonable brevity.
There has been considerable criticism of the work of this Session's Select Committee both in the Press and, directly or by implication, in the House. Being a member of that Committee, I am pleased to see that at least the recent P.E.P. paper, written by members of what is called the Study of Parliament Group, has taken a considerably more generous view. Certainly, the Committee worked very hard, in spite of some suggestions which were made to the contrary. If I may say so—and I hope I am in order—much credit is due to the Chairman, the hon. and learned Member for Liverpool, Edge Hill (Mr. A. J. Irvine) and also—again I hope that this is within the rules of order—the Clerk of the Committee who has been a tower of strength and a mine of original and acquired knowledge.
I do not think one ought to forget that the speed at which a Committee of this sort can work depends very much on the weight of evidence which it must study, and in respect of this particular subject there is no lack of evidence. But I want to reinforce, and perhaps take a little further, the point with which the right hon. Gentleman started. The House will note that in the first two paragraphs of the Third Report the Committee indulges, and, I think, indulges justifiably, in a complaint that the terms of reference inhibited its work. It had the broad terms


of reference which are usual, to study the procedure of the public business of the House and to report what alterations were necessary for the more efficient discharge of such business.
As the right hon. Gentleman said, it was also an instruction to the Committee to report first on three matters—the possibility of a Second Reading Committee, the times of sittings of the House, and the time at which Ten Minute Rule Bills should be taken. It is certainly my opinion, and I think it is fair to say that it was the majority opinion in the Committee, that the instruction to give priority to these three individual matters prevented the Committee from embarking in a proper and logical manner on the consideration of its main task. On that account, the Committee decided that the instruction to consider the times of sittings just was not possible, and that it had to consider the structure of the business of the House before it could come to any reasonable decision on the matter of times of sitting.
I want to go a little further on that. Since the war, procedure has been examined by a number of Select Committees and their recommendations have led to improvements in the working of our business, but previously they were always set up with broad terms of reference and it was not until 1958 that a Select Committee was appointed which proved to be the first of a series of what one could call "sessional" or "topical" procedure committees. They were set up in each of the following years.
The Committee of 1958 was set up in response to very much the same sort of demands made in the House during this Session and it produced a wide range of miscellaneous reforms, the greater number of which were subsequently adopted. Then, in each subsequent year, the Committee was set up again, providing a useful machine for considering specific points of procedure which had become topical or, if I may say so to the right hon. Gentleman, troublesome during the Session. I must also confess that it was a useful machine for taking the heat out of such problems.
Such a sessional or topical committee has its uses and should be continued. I think that the Government made a mistake at the beginning of this Session in trying to run together the topical com-

mittee and a committee on the old pattern with the old, wide terms of reference. I hope, therefore, that in the forthcoming Session the Government will set up a committee on the old, broad lines and a separate topical committee which can consider from day to day not the minor points but the individual points which may be referred to it by the House and which can be regarded very often as being quite separate from the main study.
In this connection, I remind the right hon. Gentleman that there is already before this Session's Select Committee a backlog of special points to consider—for example, the subject of proxy voting, which however important one may consider it, is not a matter which needs to be considered in the broad picture. There is also the very important and urgent matter of the casting vote, which the Committee has not looked at at all, and also the question of the raising of Privilege. I do not think that any of these subjects fall within the broad field and I consider that they together with any others which may occur during the next Session should be referred to a separate committee.
It might be said that there would be duplication of effort between the two committees but I do not think it beyond the wit of man to avoid that. It should be possible to have one or two hon. Members common to both committees. I do not think that that would be a breach of the accepted security of Select Committees if, in such cases, those members exchanged information.

Mr. English: Would not the right hon. Gentleman agree that a sub-committee would achieve the effect he desires?

Sir M. Redmayne: I do not know that it would. We all know that it is an arduous task to study the work that the House must do and if even some hon. Members were to be distributed to a sub-committee of the main committee I do not think that we should achieve the same object. Certainly, if I were invited to continue to take part in this study I should prefer to do it only on the terms I have suggested.
It is fair to say that we were not the first to consider the subject of Question Time and the proposal that no more than 21 days notice should be given of a Question. It was considered by the 1959 Committee, which recommended a 21-day


period of notice. It has certain disadvantages, but while the Government of the day may have been right not to accept it I am certain that the present circumstances of Question Time demand it.
I do not think that some of my hon. Friends will quite agree with me about this, but I am sorry that the Government have not accepted the further recommendation that there should be a limit on the number of Questions put down by an hon. Member during each Session. I do not know whether this appears in the evidence of the Committee, but the proposed total figure of 80–8 in each of 10 periods—has been exceeded during the last 10 years only by a small minority of hon. Members, so in fact such a limit would have been generous. Certainly it would have been a check on the habit of farming out Questions. I hope, therefore, that we shall be assured that this second recommendation will also in due course be considered by the Government if the 21-day limit does not prove satisfactory.
The third recommendation concerns the quality of support which should be given by the House as a whole to Mr. Speaker and certainly, in these sad circumstances, there is no need for a Motion. But the Committee wholly agreed that the real problem is that Question Time has lost momentum and, from my experience, I believe this mostly to be the secret. Without any sense of criticism of the Treasury Bench—because the Treasury Bench in my own day tended to commit the same faults—I say that unless an example of brevity is set by Ministers we shall never get a breakout from our present lethargic and long-winded habits.

Sir Harmar Nicholls: My right hon. Friend repeats the point made by the Lord President of the Council about the withdrawal of the Motion connected with Mr. Speaker. But is this a wise course? Might it not be considered later on as a criticism, indirectly, of Mr. Speaker, if such a Motion were to be introduced? The fact that we have a new Speaker, so that there can be no question of any criticism of his endeavours, surely provides the right time for such a Motion. If it is not dealt with now but brought in later it could be construed then as criticism of Mr. Speaker.

Sir M. Redmayne: That is a valid point but I believe nevertheless that the recommendation will not now be necessary. Just now, I heard one hon. Member opposite mutter, sotto voce, "And the Opposition Front Bench", when I referred to Ministerial Answers. I accept that. But the first long answer comes from the Treasury Bench and it is that which brakes the power to speed up in Questions. Mr. Speaker, by virtue of the unhappy event which has brought about his appointment, must regard himself as being in a very strong position to start us off on a new course and, speaking for this side of the House, I assure him that he will have every support from these benches in so doing.
The right hon. Gentleman referred to the question of the revision of the roster. He was right in saying that it was he and I who hatched the experiment of putting each Department into the roster once a week. It worked. It was quite an improvement in the circumstances of the day. Now, however, the Government propose to go back to the old system by giving a greater proportion of time to what are called the larger Departments and in these circumstances we do not object.

Mr. Bowden: But that is not my proposal. The Select Committee proposed that we should look at the question of whether or not we should go back to the system of the larger Departments having more than one day a week at Question Time. My proposal is that we should keep the system as it is now, with the present roster, certainly until Christmas, and look at it again later on.

Sir M. Redmayne: I apologise to the right hon. Gentleman. I misunderstood him. I thought that he intended to make the change now. I do not think it matters which system we have so long as it achieves more efficient results. As he himself said, these arrangements have always been flexible and it is right that they should be so. I hope that if the House intends to change the situation in respect of Question Time we might well be able to return to the old system again.
I am sorry that the Government have omitted from their drafting of the Motion on the Second Reading Committee the recommendation that the Committee of Selection should, among other things, not


unreasonably reject the application of any Member to serve on the Second Reading Committee. This recommendation was carried on a Division in the Select Committee and was supported by a number of Members on the Government side. The express purpose was to see that a Second Reading Committee, in which, after all, every Member might well have a positive interest, could not exclude any Member. We thought further that if every Member knew that he had the right to get on that Committee at request, there would be less chance of opposition to a Motion for a Bill to go to such a Committee by Members rising in their places. It is a pity that in this matter the right hon. Gentleman has allowed his ex-Chief Whip's head to overrule his House of Commons heart.
I know that when he replies he will say that the maximum number of 80 allowed to this Committee, as opposed to the 50 allowed for a normal Standing Committee, will mean that no Member need be excluded. I know too much of the tricks of the trade to accept that answer in the spirit in which it will be given.
I do not know whether the Second Reading Committee will be a success. I do not know that in the end it will save a great deal of time on the Floor of the House, because there will always be congestion at the later stages of the Bill. This is a matter of programme making and very difficult it is. I thought that I understood the right hon. Gentleman to say that all the remaining stages of the Bill would be taken on the Floor of the House.

Mr. Bowden: indicated dissent.

Sir M. Redmayne: I know that some of my hon. Friends thought that he did and it has been useful that he should clear that up. There is no reason, of course, why they should be.
Without question, as has been said in the Press, this arrangement will depend very much for its working on good will and good temper in the House, but so does the progress of all Government business. There may well be periods when it proves unusable, but that will not necessarily mean that it is a bad system. We shall all watch carefully to see whether it receives the publicity given to ordinary Second Readings, publicity not for our-

selves but that which is necessary to protect the public. Certainly the experiment is worth trying.

Mr. R. Gresham Cooke: Can my right hon. Friend explain why the Opposition have apparently agreed to the Motion that the privilege of putting a Bill before the Second Reading Committee should be limited to Ministers? After all, private Members bring forward many excellent Public Bills and the Select Committee was set up partly to assist the power of private Members against the Executive. Could not private Members have the power to put the Second Readings of Public Bills before the Second Reading Committee?

Sir M. Redmayne: That question should be put to the Government. It is not unusual, particularly during an experimental period, for propositions of this sort to be restricted in this way. However, no doubt my hon. Friend will seek to be called and no doubt the right hon. Gentleman will give him an adequate answer.

Mr. Paget: The right hon. Gentleman has very great experience of these matters. It has struck me as odd that it should be thought that this procedure would save more time than the time-honoured procedure whereby Governments put in Bills which they want to slip through late in the day, a procedure which seems to have worked very well.

Sir M. Redmayne: I absolutely agree. Governments get away with murder so long as the temper of the House is good. I often think to myself that some of the ingenious schemes which have been put forward for saving time—for example, the suggestion that a whole Session's programme should be prearranged in advance—would take infinitely longer than the present rather hit-or-miss system which we have all employed in our time.

Mr. Paget: rose—

Sir M. Redmayne: I must press on or I shall not be able to keep to the splendid declaration which I made at the beginning of my speech.
The right hon. Gentleman said that the Ten Minute Rule Bills would be begun at 10 o'clock.

Mr. Bowden: I may not have made myself clear. They would be begun after Government business, which could be at 10 o'clock, although might not normally be at 10 o'clock. It would be before the half-hour Adjournment debate.

Sir M. Redmayne: Whenever that might come. That might come before or a long way after 10 o'clock. [HON. MEMBERS: "Next day".] Or the next day. How true!
I am not perfectly clear about what is meant by the words:
a member of the Government shall have signified to the Chair his intention to move, That this House do now adjourn'".
Is that meant to be the usual business of a Whip whispering in the ear of the Chair, which has got me into trouble before now, or is the Whip to move the Adjournment and that to be rejected by Mr. Speaker in favour of the Member who has the Bill? That may seem to be a small point, but it is important to be clear, because when tempers are bad that is precisely the sort of point on which time can be wasted.
I suppose that the Motion for the Ten Minute Rule Bill would go on the Order Paper in its new place if this proposition were accepted and the issue could then arise only if the Government decided, as Governments often do, to drop one or two Orders of the Day, when we could get into an unhappy situation in which the Member with the Ten Minute Rule Bill might not be in his place, unless the Government had been particularly careful to see that he had been warned. These may sound fiddling things, but they are traps and they are traps as much for the Government as for anybody else. Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman will look at the drafting of this proposal to ensure that he gets what is wanted. I appreciate that he wants to exclude Adjournment debates for the whole day and under Standing Order No. 9.
On the more important issue of principle, what effect will this proposal have on one of the privileges of Members? One has to decide whether the Ten Minute Rule Bill is a propaganda device or a serious attempt to initiate legislation. If it is a propaganda device, then there are obviously strong arguments against missing the early editions. On the other hand, if it is a serious attempt

to initiate legislation, a lot will go through at a late hour which would not get through at 3.30.
I believe that it was the hon. Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Hale) who in an interjection said that at the late hour a Bill could be counted out and all would come to naught. However, I remind the House that the Government have a specific duty to maintain a House for the assistance of Private Members in exactly this sort of situation.

Mr. Hale: Supposing we were discussing a Scottish Sewers Amendment Bill in Committee and the Member who had the Ten Minute Rule Bill, who would not know what the business was to be when he put down the Motion for his Bill, was told that the Committee might finish at about 10 or 11 or midnight; if the Member for Drumnadrochit who had a sewer in his constituency happened to come into the Chamber, the Committee stage could go on for a couple more hours. The Member with the Ten Minute Rule Bill might have been trying to go to the lavatory for two or three hours, but not daring to leave the Chamber. If suddenly a Whip moved the Adjournment of the House, the whole House would troop out and one Member, who previously used to object on a Friday at four o'clock, could then ask for a count. What chance would there be of getting 40 Members present at two or three o'clock in the morning? I once had an Adjournment debate about a matter concerning 500 million people and at 3 o'clock in the morning? I had an audience of one to hear what I had to say about tripanosomiasis and onchocerciasis. What is the point of this proposed change which will murder a cherished right of private Members?

Sir M. Redmayne: It is not for me to defend that too hotly. These are matters which the House will consider during the course of the day, if I can find a chance to sit down. As I said, it is the Government's duty to maintain a House for the convenience of Members on these occasions.
If this proposition should be adopted, Mr. Speaker will be seized of the fact that there will be a far greater necessity to insist on a reasonable adherence to the conventions, that the time should not exceed 10 or 15 minutes, because at that


time of day there will not be the same deterrent on Members through pressure from the House as a whole. The right hon. Gentleman made the perfectly fair point that what has to be weighed up is the balance between a privilege which is available to any one Member at any one time and the interests of the House. There is no question at all that a debate on a Ten Minute Rule Bill which interrupts an important day can knock the stuffing out of the House. It is up to the House to decide, and I do not doubt that the right hon. Gentleman will say that this is an experiment and that it should be tried, and if Members find it thoroughly objectionable then we can go back to the old system.
The right hon. Gentleman made a tentative suggestion that Early Day Motions should be handed to the Table Office by 8 o'clock or 9 o'clock. It is quite true that the Early Day Motion has ceased to be an attempt to achieve a debate but it is, in his own words, just for publicity purposes. I would say that it is a very powerful means of exerting political pressure. This has shown itself more and more during these last few years.
It arises very often on something which has happened during the day in the House. We all know what we do, or what I understand other hon. Members do, because I have been prohibited from these things for so long. There is a great effort to get a sufficiency of signatures, so that the thing is impressive when it appears on the Paper the next day. I really do not think it will do for the Table to be closed for those Motions as early as this hour. Since HANSARD finishes at 10 or 10.30 perhaps Motions could finish at the same time. I think that anything earlier than that would not be acceptable.
One must of course consider the staff of the House, the printers and all who serve us. At the same time, their interests, their views on these matters must be secondary, if it is the opinion of the House that any of our practices, and any of our methods and so forth are necessary for the efficient working of the House.
On the question of the limit of two Questions I must say that when I first heard about this I was very resistant to it. I think that it removes another flexibility which is available to Members. I was rather horrified by the figures which the

right hon. Gentleman quoted, and I wonder whether we could have those figures printed in a report or a paper of some sort? I have never heard anything as high as £150 quoted as being the cost of a Parliamentary Question, and I would rather like to know how often such a cost is incurred and what is the average cost. Then I think we might be more easily able to make up our minds.
I have here a long list of the reforms which have been made during the last few years. It is too frequently said outside that Parliament is wholly resistant to reform of its own procedures. If one examines the record, one sees that there is a constant process of reform, both for the efficiency of the House and for the comfort or facility of Members. Perhaps one of the best reforms was the setting up of the Nationalised Industries Committee in 1955. It was largely on this example that the Select Committee finally based its recommendations in respect of the Estimates Committee. It is on that subject that I want to say one or two things.
The right hon. Gentleman was not willing to accept the major recommendations in respect of the examination of the Estimates and he said that he thought it ought to wait until such time as the Select Committee had proceeded further with its study of Supply. I believe that the Select Committee would proceed very much more confidently and profitably with its study of this wide question of how to save time on Supply procedure as a whole if it knew that its recommendations about the examination of the Estimates were accepted by the House.
There is a misconception about this. It is said outside, and it may well be said in the House, that the Committee has come down in favour of, or contemplates, a further move towards specialist committees, on the American pattern. I am not sure that the right hon. Gentleman did not use that phrase himself. Any careful study of the evidence given and of the proceedings on consideration of the draft Report shows that although such propositions were widely discussed, they were in the end rejected in favour of a more specialist organisation of the Estimates Committee, wholly within the existing conception of the relations of this British Parliament with the British Government. That I believe to be the nub of the whole thing.
There are reports, I know how often these reports are unreliable, that the right hon. Gentleman has gone a good deal further than this in private. I hope very much that we can be assured that this is not so. Equally it is suggested that the system envisages that the Committee should concern itself with policy, or that, on the other hand, it can hail in front of it Ministers to be pilloried, again on the American pattern. These suggestions are wholly controverted in the Report.
I ask the House, if it is in any doubt on these matters—and if perhaps it has not read the Report—to read it, because then it would be clearly and precisely seen what the Committee was aiming at. The right hon. Gentleman himself has said that there is danger in the proposed wider terms of reference that the Committee will go too far and so forth. The object of those terms is clearly stated in paragraph 7 and that is simply to give the Committee every opportunity for useful work within the limits to which I have already referred.
I do not want to appear too enthusiastic about this, or too hot in support of my colleagues on this Committee. I thought that we had come to a very sensible view and I am sorry that the Government have not accepted it. In July, 1964, a group of Members subscribed to a supplement of "Socialist Commentary" entitled "Three Dozen Parliamentary Reforms". This paper we all read with great interest, and with some of it we can agree. It started with the resounding sentence:
If and when a Labour Government takes office, it will be bursting with ideas for reform.
I think that the Committee's recommendations in respect of the Estimates Committee are a considerable advance in the power of inquiry into the Government's activities and I find it regrettable that the Government have proved so faint in pursuit of progress. It is true of course, that of the twelve colleagues in that venture seven are now Ministers of the Crown. It is thus that reforming zeal is controlled.
Some people outside this House find it strange that I ally myself with the Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Michael Foot). Hon. Members will see from the Report that this was perfectly in tune with the eventual findings of the Report, and it is the eventual findings

which matter. The Committee itself was persuaded, without any bloodshed, to put into the Report a succinct sentence which gives much of the sense of the Amendment the hon. Gentleman proposed.
In respect of the Finance Bill I believe that the Treasury can do anything it tries, and I think that the Treasury has not tried very hard. I think that this ought to be looked at again. The right hon. Gentleman said that it is not a new subject but there is a new point which we have produced between us, and that is the idea that, having separated the matter which is going into a Bill or Bills, it goes into two separate Bills. Those two separate Bills are then jointly debated on Second Reading. Thereafter, the budgetary Bill goes through the normal proceedings while the administrative Bill pursues its own course. Under these terms it is not subject to the Provisional Collection of Taxes Act or any other restrictive legislation relating to the progress of the Finance Bill
I am wholly opposed to the recommendation of a time table for the Finance Bill. If hon. Members are interested they will find my reasons succinctly set out in an Amendment on pages viii and ix of the Proceedings on the Third Report. The right hon. Member put some powerful views to the 1964 Committee in support of time table procedures for all Bills, but I am pleased to note that he appears, if only temporarily, to have changed his mind as to the desirability of that aspect of our procedure. As for morning sittings, the right hon. Gentleman said that the more one looks at the question the more difficult it becomes. I entirely agree.
In conclusion—and I hope that the House has noted how rapidly I have been turning over this mass of paper—in considering a reform of Parliament it is vitally necessary to study the reasons for any demand for change. It may well be that our existing procedures are not efficient, or are outdated in relation to the present-day work and responsibilities of Parliament. Many of these procedures are irreverently referred to as "mumbo-jumbo". I do not doubt that where they have become forms which are based on conceptions which no longer have any relevance to our proceedings they should be abandoned, and I am sure that in its next task the Select Committee will find


a very fertile growth of mumbo-jumbo in the question of Supply.
Secondly, it may well be that the work and responsibilities of Parliament are changing, and that procedures must be revised or devised to meet that change.
Thirdly, it may be that in certain circumstances—as in the circumstances of a low majority, or a large influx of new Members—complaints against our procedures arise simply because Members are impatient of the burden which those circumstances place upon them. I am sure that we are all in support of sensible and well-considered reforms, based on the first two reasons, but I hold strongly that we should not go hastily about any reform simply because the Members of any party—this is not confined to the Labour Party; it has all happened before—find the circumstances of Parliament wearisome or irritating.
In this connection it was noticeable that when, in June, a Motion appeared on the Order Paper making certain proposals for reform, the organiser of that Motion—the hon. Member for Wandsworth, Central (Dr. David Kerr) was reported in The Times as saying that the idea of associating one of the older Labour Members with the move had been rejected, and that:
We take the view that new Members bring in new ideas and we have noted the tendency that the longer people stay here in Parliament the more they regard the system as perfect and not needing improvement. Having been Members for eight months, our experience leaves us in no doubt that, if we are to carry out Harold Wilson's promise that the country would have a greater say in Parliament, we have to get rid of a procedure which is designed to do exactly the opposite. With the bubbling-up, the ferment of ideas among the new M.P.s—of whom we think ourselves symbolic—there has got to be a better channel for the communication of ideas between the back benches and the Government.
Without going deeply into the matter of "Harold Wilson's promises", on which I have certain views which would not be timely in this debate—and dismissing the point about a better channel between the back benches and the Government, because that is entirely a matter for the party in Government—I take the view that those Members who express so quick an impatience with our proceedings should not dismiss too lightly the wisdom of their colleagues. It is just possible that Members who have been

in this House a little longer see a little more clearly that some of the reforms which are so easily proposed would fail in their object for perfectly good and proper reasons, which have nothing to do with being a fuddy-duddy who has become so used to the House of Commons that he cannot see any place for reform.
We on this side will support any reforms which genuinely achieve, in the words of the terms of reference of the Select Committee,
the more efficient dispatch of our business.
I could wish that on this occasion the Government had shown themselves to be a little more ambitious in this respect.

5.35 p.m.

Mr. Michael Foot: It is agreeable to follow the right hon. Member for Rushcliffe (Sir M. Redmayne), who referred to the one occasion in the proceedings of the Select Committee when we happened to be in agreement. I have always followed everything said in every speech of the right hon. Gentleman with the greatest care, and I advise all other hon. Members to do the same. I think it was the right hon. Gentleman who made a speech in the Recess in which he suggested 28th October as a possible election day. That will be tomorrow. It was a very good idea. I wish his advice had been followed. We might then be looking forward tonight to celebrating tomorrow "Redmayne's Red Thursday". I hope that everybody will follow carefully what the right hon. Gentleman says. As for our agreement on one matter, I hope that everybody will take account of this rather formidable alliance. I say to the right hon. Gentleman, with the best good will in the world, that I hope it has done him as much damage as it has done me.
On the general issues at stake in this debate, I will try to follow his example in being as brief as I can. I am strongly in favour of the reform of Parliament, although many people accuse me of taking a different view. There are many drastic reforms of Parliament which should be carried out, and many of those drastic reforms could have been discussed by the Select Committee on Procedure.
I am not criticising the members of the Committee; any criticisms I have fall on my own shoulders as much as upon


any others. But there are many matters, such as proxy voting for people who are sick—a most urgent matter—the creation of much greater flexibility in our debates, and the reform of Standing Order No. 9 so that we can have much speedier debates on immediately topical questions, which, with many others, should have been discussed by the Select Committee, together with the frustration which is rightly felt by many hon. Members—and in particular many of my hon. Friends who have come afresh to the House—and which in my opinion derives primarily because this debating Chamber moves much too slowly to discuss the urgent debates of the time.
Further, similar subjects, such as foreign policy, are not able to be discussed with sufficient frequency; they are all put off for some two-day debate on a future occasion. If we had a system whereby every week 30 or 40 Members were able to force a debate in the subsequent week on a matter of immediate topical importance, we would help to restore the authority of this debating Chamber. It would do away with a great deal of the frustration which arises. I would have liked these proposals to be considered by the Select Committee.
These and many others would have been discussed had it not been for the fact that the Committee were sidetracked into a discussion on the question of specialist committees. The right hon. Gentleman said that he partly supported me on this matter. From his speech today I was not sure that I retained his support. I thought that he was retracting some of his enthusiastic support for this proposition. I am strongly opposed to the whole idea of extending these specialist committees, because I believe that so far from reforming the House of Commons it would inflict the gravest injury upon it. Although I admit that this proposal which has been put forward by the Select Committee on Procedure goes only a small way in that direction, I am opposed to it because I think that it could be carried further.
There are large numbers of my hon. Friends and many hon. Gentlemen in the House who see as the main cure for the disease of the present House of Commons an extension of specialist committees, either on the lines of those in the

American Congress or of those in some other Parliaments. I am strongly opposed to this proposition for reasons which I wish to state. I believe that if we could push this idea out of the way we could go ahead to real radical reform of the House of Commons.
First of all, I am opposed to this idea of small specialist committees because a Member of Parliament can only be in one place at a time. The curse of Parliamentary life at present is too many committees. I do not know the arguments of hon. Gentlemen who want many more. I have to attend too many as it is. Whenever I go to that corridor upstairs it reminds me of a Keystone comedy—people rushing hectically from one place to another without knowing where they have come from or where they are going. Some people get so obsessed about whether they will get to their next Committee on time that they do not attend to the business of their present committee. Why we are not even greater schizophrenics than we are already is a mystery to me.
Only some academic university professor could consider the present system of committees and conclude that the cure is more committees. The first reason which I have for being against this idea is that an hon. Member cannot have sufficient time to devote to further committees. Every new committee which is established means a further reduction in the number of hon. Members sitting in the House. The only reason that we have a good House tonight is that committees have not got started properly yet. We ought to have a system of curtailing committees instead of multiplying them.
My second reason for opposing this idea of small specialist committees is that it means that all the topics of debate in this House would be hashed and rehashed before they ever got to the House of Commons itself. By the time they got here, we would find the subject utterly boring or would be told by the members of the specialist committees that they knew so much more about the subject than the others that the rest of us were not supposed to speak on the matter.
The third reason why we should oppose these small specialist committees is that this is an excellent way to play into the hands of the Executive. The idea that


they will put the Minister "across a barrel"—a commendable purpose—is an error. The cosier the committee, the more likely it will be that we shall have bipartisan politics. Every Minister worth his salt knows how to diddle a committee of that nature. Therefore, all debates in those committees would be with the terms of reference laid down by the Government, by the Civil Service, and there would be a growing tendency towards more and more bipartisan policies.
The fourth reason—

Mr. Eric S. Heffer: Would my hon. Friend not agree that if one can diddle a small committee one can equally well diddle the whole House?

Mr. Foot: It is not so easy to diddle the whole House, because there are there one or two who stand out when the others are all falling in with what the majority have to say. I am sorry that my hon. Friend the Member for Nelson and Colne (Mr. Sydney Silverman) does not appreciate that, because he has spent his Parliamentary life doing exactly this. It is not so easy for them to get away with something when there are many more hon. Members watching.
I do not believe that these committees would assist in the process of cross-examining the Government, as some people suggest. More and more, I believe, the whole idea of Members conducting their main business in specialist committees mistakes the prime function of Members of Parliament. Of course it is right that Members of Parliament should be expert on some subjects, or that some of them should be experts, but the main business of Members of Parliament is to relate different forms of knowledge—in-cluding expert knowledge—and to keep the experts in their place, to know where the shoe pinches for the customers and to see that all questions are approached in a different way from that of the bureaucrats. These are the functions of Members of Parliament.
If we separate them in specialist committees, we shall be diminishing this function all the time and would end up with a situation such as they have to a great extent in the United States—where all power is transferred to the specialist committees and dissipated from

the central debating chamber. For these four reasons, I believe that we should set our face against the specialist committees.
Furthermore, and even more important, one of the main functions of a Member of Parliament is to sustain the connection between what goes on in this House and the people outside. It is to make sure that the Government of the day carry out the pledges which they made before their election, to make sure that there is a close connection between the discussion of politics within and without the House. The greatest danger we face in the House is that we should come to live as if we were cut off from the outside world. We have continually to break that down. One of the main functions of a back-bench Member of the House of Commons is to see this broken down. Ministers necessarily are engaged most of the time in their Departments and one of the main purposes of backbench Members of Parliament is to pierce the cocoon in which Ministers may be inclined to live.
Therefore, I hope that the House will put aside the idea that we can reform the House of Commons through specialist committees. It is a completely false scent. The specialist committee as a way of reforming the House of Commons bears the same relation to reform as the balloon bore to the development of aeronautics. It is a clumsy and pretentious distraction: that is all it is, so if we could push it out of the way we would be able to settle the problems both in the Select Committee on Procedure and in the debates in the House on how we are to make the House of Commons a body which represents opinion in the country, in which people in the country can see their own discussions and debates much more speedily reflected.
This is the kind of reform we need. In my opinion, one of the main ones—much more important than the things discussed in the Select Committee, and which I hope that the House will face sooner or later—is the televising of Parliament. This has to be done to restore this Chamber as the central forum of debate in the country.
This is the purpose of Parliament. My criticism of the Committee, of which was an undistinguished member, is that we never started by saying what was


the whole purpose of the operation. That was partly the Government's fault and partly, perhaps, it was our fault, but if there is to be real Parliamentary reform, we must first of all decide that we want it, then the principles on which we want it, and then to say to some committee, "How can we translate these principles into practice?". If we were to set up a committee to see how we could ensure that we had debates which were much more lively, much better attended, much more flexible and much more spontaneous, we could achieve the task and remove the frustrations which many of my hon. Friends feel. We should then have done a real service by ensuring the survival of the House of Commons.

5.49 p.m.

Sir Richard Nugent: I do not want to confine myself to agreement with the hon. Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Michael Foot), but as most of my remarks are to be directed to the subject of the specialist committees, I am particularly happy to be following him, because I agree with him in principle. First of all, I would thank the Select Committee for the collection of Reports which they have given us and which are so helpful to us now. I note with interest the Motions on the Order Paper which the Leader of the House has moved to implement various aspects of these Reports.
I support the Motions which he has moved and, in particular, I should like to thank him for moving Motion No. 5, which refers to providing the embargoed copies of reports to the Press, which was a matter which I initiated when I was Chairman of the Select Committee on the Nationalised Industries. This is a convenience. It will not often be used, but there will be times when it will be used. I hope that in due course the House will approve it.
Turning to the main point about which I want to speak, which is the Fourth Report of the Select Committee and their plea for a more extensive use of Select Committees, may I commend them for their very cautious approach. I noticed that the Leader of the House was even more cautious in saying that he was not prepared at present to adopt that proposal. I believe that the House should be extremely cautious in developments in

this direction of the more extensive use of Select Committees.
Perhaps I have some useful comments to make because for some years I was Chairman of the Select Committee on Nationalised Industries, which has evidently come under the attention of the Select Committee on Procedure and which apparently has been regarded by them as successful in its operations. There are some very real limitations in extending the experience of the Select Committee on Nationalised Industries to Select Committees examining Departments generally, as the Select Committee on Estimates does. The first of these appears in the course of the evidence and in the Report, and it is that the Select Committee on Nationalised Industries primarily examines the industrial working of each of these nationalised industries. The day-to-day operations and management of the industries are statutorily excluded from the responsibility of the Minister, so that automatically we have a very large field to investigate which is outside Ministerial control. This situation is completely different from that which is found inside any Government Department, where almost immediately investigations and inquiries begin to touch upon Ministerial actions and policies.
Even the members of the Select Committee on Nationalised Industries at times have met policy issues. When the Select Committee has been considering industrial problems in some particular industry, eventually the consideration has built up to a point at which the issues presented touched upon Government policy. This is the danger point, and it would be fair to say that the Select Committee on Nationalised Industries has been so successful only because of a very remarkable team effort by all Members who have served on it over the years and by their self-denying ordinance in recognising what are the limits within which they could effectively work.
When I was Chairman I found that in practice there were two guiding principles which the Chairman had to have in mind if he were to avoid ruining the Report of his Committee. The first was to ensure that the evidence taken was comprehensive. This meant that the Chairman and the Clerk had to do a great deal of preparatory work to make sure that the questioning covered every aspect of the


industrial activities. Too often by the end of an inquiry one has learned all about the industry and one would have liked to ask many more questions if only one had known what the problem was at the beginning. The Chairman, with the help of the Clerk, must insure against this. That is done so that when the Report is drafted it rests squarely on the evidence taken and not on anybody's opinion.
The second and far the most important principle which was always in my mind when I was Chairman was that it is useless to attempt to reach conclusions which will split the Committee. The value of a Select Committee's Report to the House is that it is unanimous. As long as it is unanimous, any document from a Select Committee has great value because we know that it is the product of a number of our colleagues from all sides of the House who have objectively examined the matter under review and together have agreed that this is the right presentation of the information and these are the right conclusions to be drawn.
But as soon as there is a minority report, except for giving a certain amount of limited information the Select Committee's Report is useless. It interested me to see that the Select Committee on Procedure were given evidence by one of the Clerks, and that they looked with some approval on a reference to the Report on the gas industry in which the Select Committee on Nationalised Industries avoided reaching a conclusion on a difficult issue of whether more gas should be produced by the Lurgi process of complete gasification of coal or by imported methane. The Select Committee on Nationalised Industries contented themselves with simply presenting the pros and cons and with reaching no conclusion. In my recollection, they did that for the very good reason that if they had tried to reach a conclusion they would undoubtedly have disagreed upon it, and their Report would have been useless to the House.
This is the point which I am trying to put before the House—that Select Committee action is effective, in my judgment, only in giving a unanimous story to the House and only if it avoids going to the point at which it touches upon political issues where there will be party differ-

ences. We had another instance of this in the Report on London Transport which was made to the House this summer. Hon. Members will have noticed that there was a critical resolution passed by the Committee criticising the Minister of Transport for action which he took on the affairs of London Transport at the time the inquiry was going on. This action by the Minister immediately tended to blur the objective approach which members of the Committee normally achieve and to cause Members to feel their partisan—and very proper partisan—loyalties to their own party. This therefore hindered the production by the Committee of an objective Report. It is necessary for the successful operation of these Select Committees not only that there is some self-denying ordinance by the Committee members but also that there is some consideration by Ministers for Select Committees when they are in operation.
This brings me to the major point which I am trying to make. I am not able to judge exactly the effect of the Select Committee's recommendations in this Report or to know whether the Select Committee on Estimates would find itself in difficulty if it went that extra distance. All I would say is that our experience in the Select Committee on Nationalised Industries has been that it is successful only if there is the greatest care and co-operation by Members on all sides in avoiding issues which touch upon policy and which will cause division in the Committee.

Mr. Trevor Park: It seems to me that the right hon. Member is saying that there are pitfalls in this specialist committee system which the Select Committee on Nationalised Industries has recognised and has overcome. Would he care to argue whether the lessons which have been learned from the Select Committee on Nationalised Industries would be equally adaptable to new committees which are established and whether the Select Committee on Nationalised Industries has, in fact, pioneered the way?

Sir R. Nugent: I am sorry if my powers of expression are so feeble that I have not been able to make the point that I see the field of nationalised industries as a special field in that the industry is outside Ministerial control and therefore there is a large area of inquiry by the


Select Committee where Ministerial responsibility and Ministerial policy will not be touched. We have been successful in making reports on these industries only by having great care in not going further into the field where Ministerial policy would be touched.

Mr. Will Griffiths: The right hon. Gentleman has had great experience of these Committees and has thought a great deal about the problem. I am prompted to interrupt by what he has said. Looking back, does he think that there ought to be Ministerial responsibility in the House for the nationalised industries? After his experience, does he feel that this responsibility should exist? I argued this point many years ago. I have always believed in accountability to the House of Commons, but as the years go by I increasingly fail to see any difference between answerability for the National Health Service and answerability for the Post Office or nationalised industries.

Sir R. Nugent: Fascinated though I would be to join in a discussion on this point, I think that I would quickly be ruled out of order if I pursued the matter further, particularly since I wish to keep my remarks short, as so many hon. Members hope to take part in the debate. For that reason I will not deal with the hon. Gentleman's intervention.
The reports of Select Committees are, of their nature, lengthy. They often take a year or more to produce. I suggest, therefore, that it would never be possible—if a Select Committee wished to inquire into a matter of burning interest and importance—to produce in time a report which would be anything like contemporary and useful to the House in its consideration of a topic which was occupying its interest.
I join the hon. Member for Ebbw Vale in pointing out that the House is the right place for fighting out the great issues of the day which divide parties and people. We must be extremely careful not to let Select Committees reach a point at which they begin to discuss party issues. If they do, their reports will take on a completely different form. They will not have the same value as they have now, and if that happens it will not be in the general interests of the House.
In this connection, it must be remembered that the major Parliamentary battles are not so much about the facts as about what people feel about the facts. The hon. Member for Ebbw Vale was right when he said that it is our duty to inform ourselves of the issues with which the Government of the day are concerned. It is, above all, our duty to express the feelings of the people we represent. Their feelings are often not particularly well-informed. Nevertheless, those are their feelings and unless they are expressed here they will feel that the House is not discharging its job properly.
To give a simple example of this, in connection with a report of the Select Committee on the electricity industry. We considered the new financial targets which had been set and which had the effect of requiring the industry to provide a greater contribution from its revenue towards large capital expenditure. The result was that the price of electricity had to be raised. For all the rational arguments expressed by the industry, we were in favour of doing this, to provide extra capital, and we were agreed that an increase in the price of electricity would be the sensible course to take. However, there can be no doubt that the man in the street was saying, "Why cannot I get my electricity cheaper? Why do they keep on making it more expensive? "The man in the street was not in the least convinced by the rational arguments which had convinced us.
As the hon. Member for Ebbw Vale said, in giving information and making reports one must be careful not to dull the edge of criticism and so get a cosier bipartisanship which prevents the House from expressing the feelings which are commonly felt outside. The House has always seemed to me well able to express not only the conflict of ideas in the minds of the people, but also to express the passions which spring from the blood. In other words, the House really has the guts of the people expressed to it and as long as that happens and is thought to happen we need not fear that the House will lose the respect and authority which enables it to carry out its basic function.
I do not believe that an extension into the realm of specialist committees would be helpful. Indeed, it might deprive us


of the valuable, unanimous, factual reports which we now receive, and I therefore hope that the House will follow the lead given by the Leader of the House and will not be willing to accept such an extension.

6.6 p.m.

Mr. William Hamilton: I wish, briefly, to concentrate my remarks on three matters which interest me greatly. They are the Ten Minute Rule governing Private Bills, Question hour, and the recommendations concerning the Estimates Committee.
I intend to vote against the Government on the issue of the Ten Minute Rule. The privilege which a back bencher has to introduce a Bill at 3.30 p.m. is one of the most cherished privileges available to him. It is a steady whittling away of his rights that disturbs me, and the speech made by my night hon. Friend earlier in no way mollified or modified that view. Indeed, it went to increase my suspicion that once one gels into Government the back bencher matters little, except in the Division Lobby.

Mr. Hale: As I have had three Ten Minute Rule Bills before the House—none of which was objected to by a single back bencher on either side at any stage, but each of which was murdered in a different and insidious way by the Minister of Pensions and National Insurance; one went upstairs and went through Committee, and then I was told that no time was available for further stages, one was refused a Financial Resolution and one was objected to every Friday—is it not reasonable to say, since clearly I shall not be called to speak in this debate either, that there are enough possibilities of frustrating private Members' legislation without shoving it off until possibly four o'clock in the morning?

Mr. Hamilton: I am obliged to my hon. Friend for that intervention. I have learned my lesson early on in my speech. My hon. Friend's point is taken, and I appreciate that he is saying that there are other reforms needed in dealing with Private Members' Bills—reforms other than the ones suggested by the Government. However, I will leave that point now, hoping that I have made my position clear.
I turn to the subject of Question hour. The back bencher cherishes this hour.

Each back bencher has an equal chance of getting at any Minister. He can select his target, both in personal and subject terms. He is sure that he will be called and, in view of the increasing frustration one feels in attempting to get called to speak in debates, it is inevitable that the back bencher will table Questions. Indeed, the more he is frustrated in his attempts to be called to speak in debates, the more Questions he will table.
At Question Time the shortcomings of Ministers are exposed. The House is quick to spot those Ministers who have done their homework and those who do not know their onions. Ministerial responsibility to the Legislature is at once obvious. Indeed, I suppose that Question Time is the nearest we get to catching a Minister with his trousers down. This is extremely healthy for efficient administration. I believe that the civil servants treat Questions seriously and that Ministers not up in their work fear Question hour more than they fear a formal debate, despite what my hon. Friend the Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Foot) said, although I will return to his speech later.
The Select Committee on Procedure was certainly right in insisting that the number of Questions reached in any hour does not measure the success of that hour, but I must congratulate the new Speaker on a very fine beginning today in reaching more than 50 Questions in the first hour over which he has presided. This brisk approach is needed by Members of Parliament, by Ministers and by the Speaker. I must say that some Ministers in this Parliament are inclined to be far too argumentative in their replies. The best Minister I have heard at the Treasury Bench was the former Commonwealth Secretary, who answered "Yes", "No", "Maybe", and nothing else. I am not recommending Ministers to go as far as that, but going to the other extreme and doing as a Junior Minister did today—irrespective of the supplementary question, reading his brief word for word, and at length—should be ruthlessly stamped out by the Speaker with complete disregard whether it is a Minister or a back bencher who engages in this kind of time wasting.
The "hogging" of time by Privy Councillors or Front Benchers at Question Time also needs to be carefully


watched by the Speaker. The Tory Front Bench has a lot of up and coming young lads—and some old lads who are anxious to prove that they still have a future or, at least, that they have not yet got a past. There is a line of them, and the Speaker should watch them very carefully.
Another point about Question Time relates to Oral Questions to the Prime Minister. I have taken out some figures, and find that from 1st April to 31st July, 1964, when the former Leader of the Opposition was Prime Minister, the number of Oral Questions put down to him was 264, or an average of just under 9 per day. The total number that he answered was 179, or 67·8 per cent. of the total—roughly two out of every three of those Questions were answered orally by the right hon. Gentleman the former Prime Minister. In the period from 1st April to 31st July, 1965, the number of Questions for Oral Answer by the Prime Minister went up to 408—an average of 13·2 per day—and the total answered by the right hon. Gentleman was 198. In other words, my right hon. Friend the present Prime Minister answered more Questions in a similar period than did his predecessor—and, of course, the quality was infinitely better. But the average number answered orally was slightly less than six by my right hon. Friend's predecessor and slightly more than six by the current holder of the office.
This leads to more frustration. The back bencher is more frustrated when he cannot get his Oral Question answered by the Prime Minister than he is if he does not get his Oral Question answered by some other Minister. From the facts I have given it is quite clear that Questions to the Prime Minister have increased in one year by rather more than 55 per cent.; it may be an unusual year—we have a new Government and a new Prime Minister.
Consideration might have been given to this particular aspect of the problem, and I have a suggestion to make on it. I do not see why on Tuesdays and Thursdays, instead of the Prime Minister answering at 3.15, which makes the chance of questioning the Ministers preceding him that much less, he should not

come on at 3.30 until 3.45, so that the Ministers who precede him still get the same time as Ministers who answer on Mondays or Wednesdays. Moreover, we might consider restricting the number of Questions put down to the Prime Minister to one per Member. Whereas one can see the advisability of not restricting the Member in regard to his two Questions per day to one Minister we should make an exception of the Prime Minister so that more Members get a chance of questioning the head of the Executive.
I am glad that the Government have agreed to the three weeks' notice. I had quite a lot of vitriol and invective prepared for them if they had accepted the other recommendation that we should engage in restrictive practices by restricting the number of Oral Questions for a Member to eight per month. Far from restricting them asking Questions we should think of how to enlarge their possibilities. I do not see why we should not have the first hour on Friday morning for Questions. We might have morning sessions. That would require the presence of one or two Ministers only, and Members could put their Questions. We should be working for a more expansive rather than a more restrictive field.
The much more fundamental problem, and one which seems to me to get at the basic causes of the undoubted decline in the public esteem and prestige of Parliament, is, to quote paragraph 2 of the Fourth Report:
The question of the detailed examination of the Estimates in the broadest sense …
The House of Commons spends about one-third of its time discussing financial matters, but although it does that it has long since contracted out of any attempt at a detailed and comprehensive scrutiny of Estimates put before it by the Government—even in the narrowest sense. As a watchdog over public expenditure, the House of Commons has neither bark nor bite. Year after year the Government get all their way with all their Estimates. We can investigate in the Estimates Committee or on the Floor of the House, but year by year the Government get all their way. Not only that, but they can deceive the House quite easily by concealing details of expenditure. We had


the example of Mr. Attlee spending £100 million on the atom bomb, and no one in this House knew.
The House of Commons can connive at this process. In 1963, the Treasury managed to cut down the details supplied to Parliament in the form of the Civil Estimates from 1178 pages to 542 pages without a whimper of protest from the House. I have compared the number of pages of information in 1955–56 with those for 1965–66. In 1955–56 we had 1296 pages of detail of where the money was going. This year we have 636 pages, but this House took not a hap'orth of interest in that.
Supply expenditure is £7,000 million, in round figures. In 1938–39 it was £700 million—ten times more today—and such control of this vast expenditure as now exists resides, not in this House but in the Treasury and, more importantly, with the Cabinet in the making of policy decisions. It is those policy decisions that determine the long-term commitments, and it is just in this field of policy making that the elected representatives have no effective control. On the contrary, every hon. Member makes a constant clamour for policies that will increase commitments, whether it be pensions, education, housing or whatever. Each Member of Parliament has his own hobby horse, and each hobby horse has its own pressure group outside. So, far from this House controlling expenditure, there is pressure from it to increase it, and the people who control it are the Executive; in other words, the Treasury and, above all, the Cabinet.
These policy decisions are taken by the Government without any scrutiny in depth by the House, and with little consultation with the House. Parliament is very often the very last body to be consulted. Consultations are held with the T.U.C., with Service chiefs, with local authority organisations and with the Employers' Confederation. After that, the Government come to the House and say, "That is the policy". Then we have a debate and the Whips are on because the Government regard every major debate as a vote of confidence, and they get their way. Ministers read their carefully prepared briefs, hon. Members read their carefully prepared speeches, the vote is taken, and then we move on to the next debate.
That seems to me to point to the fact that, as at present constituted and with its existing procedures, the House is too big an assembly with too little time and not enough information to present any effective or detailed challenge to the Government. That challenge is coming, but what is a disturbing feature, in my view, is that it is coming not from the House of Commons but from the TV interviewer and the journalist. They can question Ministers uninhibited by any restrictive terms of reference and in full view of millions of electors. I believe that Ministers are often more afraid of Mr. Robin Day than of any Member of the House. We are in danger of getting to a situation in which true democracy begins and ends on polling day, and thereafter the Government become virtual dictators. The Prime Minister, with access to all the facts on any given problem and possessed of enormous powers of patronage with which he can buy the silence of his most garrulous and dangerous critics, becomes almost unassailable.
The question of lack of time raises problems concerned with the sitting of the House, the possibilities of taking certain items of business off the Floor of the House and the desirability of regarding membership of the House as a full-time occupation. We all have views on those topics, and I shall not develop mine now except to say that I want morning sittings. I think Members ought to be full-time, and more business ought to go upstairs. But, even assuming that more time were available, what we need in addition is more information. In support of that, I would cite the two examples of the White Paper on immigration and the Suez exercise. My hon. Friend the Member for Ebbw Vale said that Ministers cannot deceive the House as easily as they could a Committee upstairs. He introduced a Bill precisely because he could not get at the facts about Suez. I think that a Committee upstairs would have stood a better chance of getting the facts than did hon. Members on the Floor of the House.
If I may refer to the White Paper on immigration, no one in the House knows what consultations took place with local authorities or Government Departments, nor what were the details of the Mountbatten Mission. How were the figures arrived at in the White Paper? We have


no means of finding that out on the Floor of the House, and the paucity of research facilities available to private Members is ludicrous. It is no reflection whatever on the staff of the Library or on anyone else in the House. It is simply that the bodies and facilities are not available. The dangerous consequence of that is that there is an increasing dependence on briefs from outside bodies. We saw that greatly in evidence in the course of the Finance Bill debates last June and July.
How can the gulf between Parliament and the Executive be lessened? The Fourth Report of the Select Committee suggested one way and only one way by which the House of Commons might secure a more efficient system of scrutiny of administration. It recommended the broadening of the scope of the Estimates Committee and a greater measure of specialisation in its workings, plus additional facilities for the employment of ad hoc specialist advice from outside the Government machine.
As the Estimates Committee is at present constituted, with its existing terms of reference, it does a useful job, although its usefulness has tended to be exaggerated from time to time. But it labours under very considerable handicaps. The Select Committee's recommendations will go some way towards removing or at least reducing those handicaps, and, although I was not glad about very much of my right hon. Friend's speech, I was glad that he said we could go ahead with providing additional staff. I am not sure where we will get them, because recruiting problems are quite serious. If we can get two Clerks instead of one supervising the Committee as a whole and if we can get one full-time Clerk for each of the Sub-Committees and can employ specialist assistants, then these recommendations which have been accepted by the Government will go some way towards solving a number of our problems.
I would ask my right hon. Friend a question which perhaps he answered in part of his speech. I am not quite sure what will be the total additional number of Clerks required, for example, to man the Standing Committees. The Clerks of the Estimates Committee also man the Standing Committees, and there

are two per Standing Committee. If those Clerks are to be wholly occupied with the Estimates Committee, it will mean a fairly substantial increase in the number of Clerks recruited and, if we accept the recommendation to send Second Readings of Bills upstairs, that will further aggravate the problem. I would like an assurance from my right hon. Friend that that is being looked into carefully and that the recent economy circular that has gone round to all Government Departments, including the Department of the Clerk of the House, will not adversely affect the possibility of getting those additional Clerks.
The employment of specialist assistants will certainly not make the Estimates Committee a serious rival in any field of expertise to any Government Department; nor would we expect it to do so. We would not pretend to be on a basis of equality in that regard. But it will make the Committee less easy prey to the civil servant giving evidence, especially a civil servant from a technical department.
Let me refer now to the question of specialist committees. As the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Rushcliffe (Sir M. Redmayne) said, there has been considerable misunderstanding of the proposition that has been put forward by the Select Committee. What has been recommended is already within the power of the Estimates Committee to implement. In other words, our Sub-Committees could engage in specialisation now, under their existing terms of reference. As hon. Members may know, our investigating Sub-Committees are known by a letter of the alphabet—A, B, C, D, E, F and G. They do not specialise in the accepted sense, though one or two may conduct inquiries on, say, military expenditure two or three years' running. But, generally speaking, they are not defined as specialist Sub-Committees as such. A member of the House on joining the Estimates Committee for the first time cannot know to which Sub-Committee he is to be allocated, nor can he know the subject that his Sub-Committee is going to investigate. The proposition now is simply that Sub-Committees shall be identified, not by a letter of the alphabet, but by subjects. The Clerk-Assistant suggested certain groupings of Departments, for instance a


social services group which would involve a certain number of subjects, defence and foreign affairs and so on. If we accepted this grouping it would mean an additional Sub-Committee, and, incidentally, a further Clerk.
There seems nothing revolutionary about that proposal, yet it was opposed by the unholy alliance of my hon. Friend the Member for Ebbw Vale and the right hon. Member for Rushcliffe on the argument that this would detract from the authority of the House of Commons, that the number of Committees upstairs would empty ais debating Chamber—

Mr. Arthur Blenkinsop: So far as I understand, the right hon. Member for Rushcliffe (Sir M. Redmayne) accepted the proposal very strongly and rather regretted the view expressed by my right hon. Friend speaking for the Government.

Mr. Hamilton: I thought that the speech by the right hon. Member for Rushcliffe was in contradiction to what he voted for with my hon. Friend the Member for Ebbw Vale during the Committee's proceedings. The arguments of my hon. Friend—who, I am sure, drafted the Amendment, because I recognise the language and phraseology—were that the proposal would detract from the authority of the House, the specialist committees would empty the Chamber, limit the range of debates in this Chamber, reduce spontaneity and flexibility in the proceedings in this House and take more and more issues out of politics.
His speech this afternoon was discussing a monumental Aunt Sally. He attacked a proposition that has never been made. Never at any time in the course of the Select Committee's proceedings were specialist committees suggested to question Ministers upstairs. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."] It was suggested to the Committee, but the Committee did not make that recommendation. It set that aside and concentrated on other issues. What we are debating now are the other issues. I agree that this Chamber ought to be the central forum of discussion, but it must be informed discussion. I never thought that my hon. Friend would be so terrified of a mouse. That is all that this recommendation is, a mouse. Far from threatening the authority of the House of Commons, this proposition is designed to

enhance the prestige of this House and not to threaten or diminish it. The aim is to ensure that debates on the Floor of the House are based on more adequate information than is the case at present.
The right hon. Member for Rushcliffe referred to the Select Committee on Nationalised Indutries. I do not think many hon. Members would argue that debates on nationalised industries have not been better in this House since that Committee was set up and made Reports. I believe that the debates in this House would be the bettter for the additional information that the House would get from the specialist committees. Parliament can be, often is, and ought to be, a stage for spectacular displays of oratory. My hon. Friend the Member for Ebbw Vale is frequently one of the stars. I suspect that that is why he thinks rather than the Committees upstairs this should be the stage.
More importantly, Parliament is a body of men and women elected by the people to control the excesses of Government, to ensure that the Executive responds to the wishes of the elected Legislature. An effective debater and a good debate demand not only eloquence of expression, but eloquence based on factual knowledge. The specialist committees envisaged by the Select Committee cannot supply the eloquence, but they can at least provide the facts. I should go much further. Despite what my hon. Friend said, I would appoint other specialist committees to challenge, question and advise Ministers on policy and on proposed legislation. That is another matter and I shall not pursue it further.
A final word on the suggested terms of reference and their extension by the Select Committee. My right hon. Friend's speech this afternoon conveyed the impression that the Government are terrified that the terms of reference should be extended just a little. These were the words of the Clerk-Assistant in answer to Question No. 24:
The terms of reference may be a little wider, Sir; I do not know that it is much.
The reply of my revolutionary, modernising right hon. Friend could not have been bettered by the former Leader of the Opposition. In Question No. 298 my right hon. Friend, referring to the suggested extension of the terms of reference, said that he was afraid these terms were


too wide and might stray into the realms of policy. Later he said, as he has repeated today, that we ought to carry on as we are now. This is Tory policy in a nutshell. He went further and said that he had had complaints from Departments that the existing terms of reference were too wide.
From what quarters did these wild and dangerous proposals come which so scare and terrify my hon. Friend the Member for Ebbw Vale and the Government? They came from the revolutionaries at that Table, the Clerks of the House. These are the most dangerous men in this Palace. They are deeply suspected by the Government and by my hon. Friend. They are the revolutionaries of this Palace. Why are they there? Because they see this place much more than we do. If we look at the proposals which have been made for reform of procedure in this House, we see that the most advanced time and time again have come from the Clerks of the House. They have gone much too fast and much too far for even the most progressive—selfstyled progressive—thinkers among Members of Parliament. I sometimes despair that we shall get very far in reform of our proceedings.
My right hon. Friend has said that he has never heard any complaints about the terms of reference of the Estimates Committee. He should have read the evidence of Mr. Lidderdale and Mr. Farmer in answer to Questions by the right hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Mr. Turton) which pointed out that there had been 10 years of complaint along these lines and the terms were changed in 1960 after Mr. R. A. Butler, as he then was, spoke in the debate. I plead with my right hon. Friend to have another look at these terms of reference. The Government have gone only part of the way in meeting the recommendations of the Select Committee. They have been far too timid and far too conservative. I hope that when further recommendations are made by the Select Committee they will not again lay themselves open to the charge of having dragged their feet.

6.40 p.m.

Mr. John Peel: Never in my wildest dreams did I think that I might find myself one day in agree-

ment with some of the basic recommendations of the hon. Member for Fife, West (Mr. William Hamilton). But I do. One of the many definitions of a politician is that he is a person who exists to tell the Civil Service those things up with which the public will not put.
For a great many years we have read and heard from constitutional historians and others that in this country the Executive is becoming increasingly powerful, at the expense of the sovereign Legislature. I believe that this is absolutely bound to happen in a society and a civilisation which is becoming increasingly complex, for the very good reason that the politician is necessarily temporary. He depends for his position upon the electorate every few years, whereas the civil servant is more or less permanent. Therefore, a civil servant becomes knowledgeable over a great range and variety of subjects. What is more, an increasing amount of power has to be delegated to the bureaucrat. We are getting very near to the position where an increasingly powerful Executive is operating under cover of the authority of a sovereign democratically elected Parliament.
The hon. Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Michael Foot) put his finger on the problem, but in the wrong way. He complained of the difficulty of attending all the committees and activities that now confront Members of Parliament. That is just the trouble. In a world which is becoming technologically and technically so much advanced, like the rest of the world Parliamentarians must become more specialised. There may be objections to this, but I think that it is inevitable. It is hopeless for Members of Parliament to think that they can speak and dilate upon all the varied subjects that now affect a highly advanced civilisation and attend committees which deal with all these matters and expect to be expert on them all. This is impossible. The hon. Member for Ebbw Vale makes a great mistake by chasing up and down the corridors upstairs to go from one committee to another.
This means that a sovereign Legislature composed of elected representatives is becoming dangerously less and less sovereign and in touch with the Government of the country. There is even a tendency amongst some Ministers to become super civil servants and to forget


that they owe their power and position in the House to the electorate and not to Whitehall. They forget this at their peril.
This tendency must be reversed. It is all very well for people to criticise the United States Constitution. Possibly they go too far in the United States in knocking their civil servants and their experts about, but the fact of the matter is that Members of Congress exercise much greater power than Members of Parliament in this country do. I think that is right and proper. They do it because they control in a very real sense the moneybags, because they have a very real say in expenditure, much more than we do. They do that partly because, through their committee system, they can get a great deal more information than back benchers here can get.
If we want to reverse the growing tendency in this country to belittle Parliament, the status of ordinary Members of Parliament must be enhanced. I have heard it said outside the House, and I have no doubt that other hon. Members have heard it said, that if people want things done they do not come to Parliament or to Members of Parliament; they can get things done much better outside. This arises because of the tendency, at an increasing pace, for the Executive to gain power at the expense of the sovereign Parliament.
I believe that the Committee system could be adapted and evolved in the House of Commons to give ordinary Members of Parliament a great deal more knowledge and say in the government of their country. One of the great arguments against this is that security is the difficulty. If it is, ways must be found of overcoming it. We must try to evolve methods of security to meet that problem. I do not think this is a good enough excuse with which to fob off the necessity to give Members of the House of Commons more information and more power.
I know that with the present Government this is a particularly difficult problem. This is why I was so interested in the remarks of the hon. Member for Fife, West. The theory of Socialism breeds bureaucracy. In the end it becomes so powerful that it becomes their master. I am sure many hon. Members opposite are aware of this problem. The proposal for an ombudsman goes some way to meet

this, but it does it on an individual plane and not on the wider one. We need to turn our attention to wider considerations.
To sum up on this point, I think that such wide delegated powers are now given to bureaucrats that they should be seen to be much more responsible to public opinion than has been the case in the past and less protected by political chiefs.
I turn to a rather more mundane matter which very much affects our work here. It concerns Parliamentary delegations which have to represent the House on such bodies as the Council of Europe, Western European Union, and the N.A.T.O. Parliamentarians. In my opinion, these delegations should be serviced by members of the staff of the House and not by Departments. We are a Parliamentary body. The servants of the House should service us abroad.
The money required for the day-to-day expenses of Members of the House serving on these delegations should come under a Parliamentary vote and not under the vote of some Department of State. I do not think it should necessarily follow that the allowance of a Member of the House serving on a delegation abroad should be exactly the same as that of a civil servant. A Member of Parliament has a different position. He has different duties to perform. The money required for this should come from a Parliamentary vote. It should be paid out of the Vote Office. It should be drawn by the Member before he goes abroad. It should not have to be claimed by him after he gets abroad or, worse still, after he has spent his money and returns here and has to put in an account. I hope that whoever replies for the Government will give some serious attention to this matter, because I think that many of us who have represented this House abroad have found ourselves often at an embarrassing disadvantage compared with our Parliamentary colleagues from other countries who—

Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Member is getting a little wide of the subject of the debate.

Mr. Peel: I beg your pardon, Mr. Speaker. I thought that I might be straining the rules but I knew that I should be very quickly called to Order and that was all that I wanted to say on the subject.

6.51 p.m.

Mr. Sydney Silverman: I do not intend to discuss in any detail the general propositions which my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House put before the House in the speech with which he opened the debate. I do not do so because I find them too disappointing and too limited in their scope to be worth prolonged discussion. If all of them were adopted the effect on making our procedure more efficient for its job in the modern age would be virtually nothing, and one of the proposals would do intense harm. What we need is a much more drastic and fundamental overhaul of all our procedure as it has historically developed.
Our trouble is that we are trying to do a modern highly technical job with a machine, with very slight modification, evolved two or three centuries ago. This is not sufficient. While maintaining the principle and the traditions on which our procedure is based we have to bring it sufficiently up to date to make it a workmanlike institution doing a workmanlike job measured to the exigencies and requirements of our own day.
Somebody talked about bursting with ideas. My own experience is that almost all hon. Members when they first enter the House are obsessed with the idea of reforming it. They subsequently divide into two classes. There are those who give up the ghost and resign themselves to the situation as it is, either because they give up their ideas or find the job of making progress too difficult. There is the other class which goes on hoping and striving all the time without making very much progress at any time.
What is the great requirement of our Parliament? It surely is to get rid of its frustrations. Never at any time in our Parliamentary history has the average back-bench Parliamentarian had so little influence on any of the Parliamentary functions as he has now. We have little or no influence on policy. We have virtually no control whatever over public expenditure. The job of the efficient loyal back-bencher is to be present when the Whips want him to be present, to vote as they would like him to vote, to speak as often as possible if he is in opposition and wants to make difficulties for the Government and as little as possible if he

is on the Government side and wants to help the Government on with their business. We shall not make Parliament efficient, respected or worth while unless we succeed in attracting into our membership really energetic, progressive-minded young people anxious to make a career of the job, not in the sense of winning personal distinction but in the sense of making their mark on the history and development of their time.

Sir Harmar Nicholls: I wonder how the hon. Member reacts to the reflection that neither the Prime Minister nor the Leader of the Opposition has sat on the back benches.

Mr. Silverman: I am not reacting to anything but trying in a short time to give my own thoughts, derived from what is now not a short experience of the House of Commons.
One of the fundamental needs is to attract young, ambitious, energetic men and women who are anxious to make a real contribution. We are not getting them because in our procedure as it is they have no opportunity of making any real contribution at all. One of the difficulties had always been that we were paid so little and a young man who married and perhaps started a family and wanted to give his full-time attention to the House found it was economically and financially impossible. I think that we have corrected that.
I think that we have corrected it for a long time to come, but that is not enough. People of the kind we want are not content to come here and sit on the benches and file steadily and loyally through the Division Lobbies merely for the money. We shall not find the right kind of people until we make it possible for them to have a real influence on affairs and until they feel that membership of the House is something more than a social distinction and that it gives them a real opportunity of doing creative work in the affairs of a democratic community. I do not think that there is any hon. Member who thinks that our present procedure enables this to be done.
I was a little shocked by the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. M. Foot). He really must be careful about getting into the wrong company.

Mr. Michael Foot: The right hon. Member for Rushcliffe (Sir M. Redmayne) got into mine. I did not get into his.

Mr. Silverman: That may be, but I think that my hon. Friend put it rightly himself when he said that he hoped that it had done the right hon. Gentleman as much harm as it had done him.
I know that my hon. Friend is in complete sympathy with the spirit of what I have said so far. I know that when he opposes specialist committees it is because he thinks that they will be a handicap and a detriment to the removal of frustration and not a help. For my part, on the specialist committee discussed in the Report of the Committee on Procedure I entirely agree with my hon. Friend, but for the opposite reason. This kind of specialist committee will not do. The kind of specialist committee we want is a committee which gives the back-bencher the opportunity of close proximity to the making of policy and to the administration of affairs.

Mr. Stanley Orme: Including civil servants.

Mr. Silverman: And it is quite impossible for anyone to believe that we can do that in a full-dress debate on the Floor of the House with 630 Members most of whom are clamouring to speak. It is just impossible. If we must make a job of the thing we must propose a specialist committee, not like the American ones but like the Continental ones, which give ordinary Members a chance of having a direct impact on the conduct of affairs both administratively and in matters of policy. We shall have to do it some day. We shall not be able to get this fundamental reconstruction of our work by having a continuous Committee on Procedure taking this little point and that little point, crossing this small "t" and dotting that small "i" so that at the end of the years we are practically no further on than we were when we began. There must be something much more than that. However, I shall say no more on this subject now. It is very tempting to do so, and I should like to do so, but this is not the occasion for it.
I turn now to one proposal which I most earnestly beg the House to reject. I refer to the proposal that Ten Minute Rule Bills be taken after Government

business instead of before Government business. When one reads this proposal in association with the proposal for a committee to decide whether there shall be a Second Reading of a Bill, one sees that the result is to destroy for all intents and purposes the whole effect for private Members of the Ten Minute Rule Procedure. One is left with nothing.
It could easily be dealt with otherwise. Why, under the Second Reading Committee suggestion, is it limited to a Minister of the Crown making the necessary proposals? Why are Private Members' Bills excluded from it? If these two limitations were removed, the proposal to take Ten Minute Rule Bills at the end of the day would be tolerable because then one would not have the result that they were moved and opposed at the end of business when everyone is tired and wants to go home and no one is interested, quite apart from the fact that, even if one got a Bill through in those circumstances, it would take its place at the end of the queue for a Second Reading debate without the advantage of the proposal for a Second Reading Committee.
I remind the House that Ten Minute Rule Bills are not always purely gestures or propaganda exercises. They are sometimes, and none the worse for that, but it is not always so. If I may make a personal reference, I am thinking of my own Death Penalty (Abolition) Bill of 1956. At the beginning of that Session, there had been the ordinary Ballot for Private Members' Bills. We had persuaded the late Mr. John McGovern to take part in the Ballot and to introduce that Bill if he won. He did win. He won the first place. But he was unable to present that Bill or any other because he was at that time morally rearming Australia. So we lost our opportunity on that occasion.
What I did was to move the Bill myself under the Ten Minute Rule procedure, and, by some miracle which I have never been able to understand, no one opposed it. So it went through, and we then had to start an agitation, supported by hon. Members on both sides, to persuade the Government to find time for the Second Reading. They did not find time for the Second Reading quite at once, but they did find time for what they had refused up to that moment, that is, a


general discussion of the report of the Royal Commission on Capital Punishment.
When the House, in no uncertain terms, expressed what it thought about the Royal Commission's Report and what ought to be done, time was found for the Second Reading and the Bill was carried through all its stages without Amendment. If it did not become the law of the land, that was because the Home Secretary of the day had pledged himself to carry out the will of the House of Commons expressed on a free vote and also the will of the House of Lords expressed on a free vote, without taking the precaution of seeing that they would come to the same conclusion. He found himself, therefore, pledged to the House of Commons to abolish the death penalty and pledged to the House of Lords to retain it, and the result was the compromise which we are now removing.
This was an example of how the Ten Minute Rule can be used for positive legislation. I suggest to my right hon. Friend that, if he is persisting with this proposal, and if the House allows him the proposal to postpone Ten Minute Rule Bills till the end of the day, at least he should remove the restrictions from his other proposal about a Second Reading Committee.

Mr. Paget: Will my hon. Friend help me on one point, as there seems to be some misunderstanding about the Ten Minute Rule procedure? It is quite unnecessary to secure leave under the Ten Minute Rule to present a Bill. One can present it without getting any leave at all. The purpose of the Ten Minute Rule Bill is solely to get publicity for one's Bill. Therefore, putting it at the end of business would totally destroy the purpose and value of that procedure. It would be something taken away in its entirety from private Members if that proposal were adopted.

Mr. Silverman: My hon. and learned Friend is quite right when he says that one can present a Bill for First Reading at any time. One does not need anyone's leave, and once one has done it, one is entitled to have the Bill printed and the procedure for getting a Second Reading is exactly what it was before. But I do not agree that the whole purpose

of making the speech is propaganda. It is also to influence opinion in the House against the time when one may have an opportunity to seek the voice of the House. Therefore, what my hon. and learned Friend says—I am sure he agrees—reinforces the argument which I am putting to my right hon. Friend.

Mr. Paget: Yes, of course.

Mr. Silverman: People talk as though the Ten Minute Rule procedure was a great embarrassment to the work of the House. All we are concerned with is 20 minutes a day on two days a week. It might be more, but very rarely.

Mr. Leo Abse: The evidence given was that, on 35 occasions out of the 43, 8·5 minutes was the time taken, so, on average, in the whole of the period 1963–64, my hon. Friend is exaggerating when he speaks of 20 minutes.

Mr. Silverman: I always like to understate my case. It is much easier to correct an understatement than to diminish an overstatement. But I take it that my hon. Friends support me in the proposition that I am putting, that, as regards time, there is no real embarrassment to the Government at all.
I hope that the proposal will not be persisted in. It is wholly against the interests of private Members. The opportunities which private Members have for exercising any real influence on affairs are hopelessly limited and almost nonexistent. This is one of the very few occasional exceptions, and the proposal which is now made would destroy what little effectiveness it has left.
I shall take no more of the time of the House. I am glad to have had an opportunity to put on record my general attitude to procedural reforms at this time in the 20th century. The practical point I wanted to make was to persuade the Government to withdraw their proposal about the Ten Minute Rule procedure.

7.9 p.m.

Sir Lionel Heald: It is very tempting to follow the hon. Member for Nelson and Colne (Mr. Sydney Silverman) in his general observations, and there is a very great deal in what he said with which I would agree, but I feel that I might perhaps be able to make a small


practical contribution to the debate by referring briefly to one of the Motions which has not yet been discussed in any detail since the Leader of the House spoke, and that is his Motion dealing with the proposed Second Reading Committee.
That Motion has just been mentioned by the hon. Member for Nelson and Colne, and with what he said about it I should like in due course briefly to agree. Not having been concerned with this part of the discussion before the Select Committee on Procedure, I was very much interested in the attitude it adopted towards this proposal.

Mr. Speaker: Order. An hon. Member has complained about the low temperature of the Chamber. I hope that those responsible for the heating arrangements will investigate the complaint. I am so sorry to have interrupted the right hon. and learned Gentleman.

Sir L. Heald: One would certainly expect the temperature of the Chamber to be very moderate and I am sure that on your arrival, Mr. Speaker, it is very appropriate that it should be so.
I observe that the Select Committee appears to have had some concern on the question of referring the Second Reading of Bills to a Committee. I believe that it is a matter that we should briefly consider today. The Committee speaks of the danger of preventing hon. Members from exercising their constitutional right to express their views on the general principles of a Bill and to the risk to both hon. Members and the public inherent in any scheme which might have the result that some Second Reading debates would take place less in the public eye than at present.
The Select Committee then suggests in very general terms that appropriate steps should be taken to ensure that, so far as possible, the debate will receive not less public notice than if it had occurred on the Floor of the House. I have some apprehensions as to whether it will be possible for that result to be achieved. It has been said that non-controversial Bills should on the whole be the Bills to be dealt with by this new procedure. But when I considered what was meant by "non-controversial" I found that the Minister without Portfolio had, when he

gave his evidence, described "non-controversial" in the sense of a subject which does not divide the parties on party political grounds.
I believe that it is rather dangerous to approach the matter from that point of view, because it appears to assume—this is supported by other passages in the evidence—that the fact that a Bill deals with technical questions or problems is a reason for not requiring it to be discussed publicly in detail on Second Reading. I believe that that would be a very dangerous assumption to make because the function of the Second Reading is not only, as has rightly been emphasised by the Leader of the House, to give information to the public on the subject but to alert all those who are concerned with the matter all over the country so that they may know what are the dangers, possibly evils, that might arise from the legislation if the Bill is not very carefully scrutinised and amended. I believe that it is very important, particularly these days when technical matters have assumed such importance in our legislation, that we should bear that in mind.
I can give a practical example which occurred in the last few days. It concerns the Employees' Inventions Bill. It was introduced in another place. At the time it was thought—indeed, it was said—that it was a very minor matter dealing only with, in effect, a trifling Amendment to correct a drafting mistake in a 1949 Act. It was only when the Bill arrived in this House for Second Reading that it was pointed out by several hon. Members that the question of employees' inventions was a very difficult and serious one and that there had not been consultations with all the various bodies and organisations concerned, and that from the point of view of both the employee and the employer unless great care was taken with the drafting and very substantial Amendments were made, instead of the justice which the Bill on its face purported to do, injustice might result.
As a result of that, by the time the matter came up for hearing in Committee, a number of Amendments had been tabled, and it was recognised by the Government, very properly, that the matter was one which required further consideration. The Bill has now been withdrawn. It is hoped that there will be,


and I am sure that there will be, consultations with all concerned and that a good Bill will be able to be brought forward in the next Session, and if that is done, it should go through without any difficulty.
That provides a very practical example of the dangers that might arise if we found ourselves, for the sake of the laudable purpose of clearing the decks for what are considered to be more important Measures to be discussed in this House, pushing these technical Bills quickly and quietly away to a Committee. We might very well find that the Bills, when they were converted into Acts, were highly unsatisfactory.
I do not feel at all happy about what is said here about the possibility of ensuring that the debate in Committee will receive not less public notice than if it had occurred on the Floor of the House. It is the experience of everyone today that some years ago—not very long ago; when I first came into the House—Committee proceedings were much more widely reported than they are today. Now it is true to say that in many cases there is practically no report at all of a Committee proceeding. I should like to know that some consideration has been or will be given to how such a result can be not only brought about but even facilitated. If discussions in the Second Reading Committee do not receive the same kind of attention in the public Press as a Second Reading debate in the House does, I think it can be said that there would be a danger of the proposal doing very much more harm than good.

Mr. English: Would not the right hon. and learned Gentleman think that we should put our own house in order by starting to print those proceedings in the ordinary daily and weekly parts and volumes of HANSARD?

Sir L. Heald: I would entirely agree with the hon. Member, but I should be afraid that one would not have the alerting of public opinion that one gets from an ordinary Second Reading debate, particularly if strong speeches are made and particular attention is not given to them.
I agree with the hon. Member for Nelson and Colne that there seems to be on the surface no reason why the proposed procedure of a Second Reading

Committee should not be applicable to Private Members' Bills. I have sympathy with the hon. Member because a Private Members' Bill which I managed to get through in spite of various difficulties, although it had nothing like the fame or importance of his Bill, certainly was one of some substance. I have never subscribed to the view that Private Members' Bills are merely a form of advertisement. If the Bill is one of any substance, it usually involves one in a great deal of hard work and not very much thanks for it. But these are Public Bills. I often find that members of the public have difficulty in understanding that there are Public Bills and, therefore, if the principle is applicable to Public Bills it is hard to see why a particular kind of Public Bill should be excluded just because it is presented by a back bencher and not by a Minister. I trust that the Government will have something more to say about that.

Mr. Speaker: Before I call the next speaker, I should observe that I shall endeavour to see that, in our debates, all shades of opinion are represented but that I shall be disinclined to call a shade of opinion if its owner does not sit through the debate.

7.21 p.m.

Mr. J. J. Mendelson: The right hon. and learned Member for Chertsey (Sir L. Heald) has referred to some specific and very important items in the Government's proposals and I shall not develop his themes on this occasion only because I wish to concentrate on one subject and one alone so that I shall not take up too much time. The subject to which I wish to address myself concerns the proposal for specialist committees of one kind or another that has been made from time to time and has echoed throughout this debate.
First, I want to establish one simple proposition. No matter what the actual recommendation in the Report might say, the serious background to the recommendation consists of the memoranda submitted, the discussions that have taken place and the general debate that has been going on for some time outside this House about the establishment of specialist committees in the broadest sense. I think that I should carry the right hon.


Member for Rushcliffe (Sir M. Redmayne) with me in stating that simple proposition, although he was a little anxious to disentagle himself somewhat from too close a partnership with my hon. Friend the Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Michael Foot).

Sir M. Redmayne: Not at all. I explained in my speech that this partnership was perfectly logical.

Mr. Mendelson: It appears that my hon. Friend did not have that impression, but no doubt the matter can be cleared up later on. The right hon. Gentleman seemed anxious to make clear the distinction between the final recommendation that had been adopted and the broader proposition of specialist committees in general. I think that he will accept that as a fair description of what he said.
I ask the right hon. Gentleman and my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House to accept my second proposition—that those who are actively pursuing the more limited changes that are mentioned in the Report are dead keen on getting a much broader reform of this House and a much broader arrangement of specialist committees and of the part they will play in Parliamentary procedure and Parliamentary life. I believe that this is quite freely admitted by the most active hon. Members advancing the idea, and I am glad to see that I carry several of my hon. Friends with me in that second proposition.
There is no reason why the debate should not take place on the broader proposition because it is a proposal that has been widely discussed in many circles and this is a time, I believe, when we should put on record where we as individual Members stand. It is very much a matter for hon. Members as individual Members. I would go so far as to suggest that, if this proposal were once started and then carried to its further conclusion, it would mean the most fundamental change that has occurred in this House for a very long time.
Indeed, in stating at the beginning that I am completely and utterly opposed to the suggestion of specialist committees in general, and that I am opposed to these particular proposals because they would, I believe, open the door to this wider de-

velopment, I want to state some of my own reasons, which have not been covered by my hon. Friend the Member for Ebbw Vale, who also opposes such specialist committees.
I want first to refer to the experience of the United States, then I hope we may turn to the additional point made about continental specialist committees put by my hon. Friend the Member for Nelson and Colne (Mr. Sydney Silverman). I begin with the American experience because, whatever one might say—and some of my hon. Friends have suggested it in recent weeks—one must take a major power that has been basing its politics upon Parliamentary institutions for a long time in order to draw proper examples for one's case. Obviously, therefore, the experience of the United States must be looked at first.
My hon. Friend the Member for Ebbw Vale, with his critical attitude towards the academic profession, said, during his speech, that it took an academic professor to come along with such a proposal—and my hon. Friend pronounced the word "such" in such a manner that he obviously meant that it was an absurd proposal. But it is by no means agreed among academic professors that these specialist committees are a good idea. I want to pray in aid a brief quotation from one of the greatest experts, Professor Charles A. Beard in his book "American Government and Politics". Discussing the committee system late in his career and after a lifetime of experience in teaching and researching into the American system of Government, Professor Beard wrote:
Owing to the high prerogatives enjoyed by committees, to the secrecy that surrounds their operations, and to the pressure of lobbies on them, a great deal of criticism has been directed against the whole system as a piece of legislative machinery … It would be idle to contend that the indictments brought against the committee system are to be lightly dismissed. In the House of Representatives, at least, it certainly tends to break responsibility into thirty or more fractions and to reduce that chamber to the level of a 'rubber stamp' for committee reports. Since debate on the floor is likely to be ineffective, the secrecy that surrounds committee proceedings is made all the more objectionable.
That is a classic statement from a highly reputable American source against the whole case that has been built up in various circles here advancing the idea of specialist committees as a solution for


our Parliamentary difficulties. But this is not the end of the matter.
There is involved in this criticism a whole range of experiences that have interfered with the democratic process in the American system of Government. If one looks closely at the important committees—particularly those for defence and foreign affairs—one sees the growth of close relations between members of those committees and the Government Departments concerned. When my hon. Friend the Member for Fife, West (Mr. William Hamilton) puts forward the idea of these committees as though this would defeat the Executive and make hon. Members, either as individuals or as groups, more powerful vis-à-vis Government Departments, I find it highly amusing. Nothing could be further from reality.
Time and again, the powerful Government Departments in the United States connected with defence and foreign affairs have developed close relations with members of the appropriate committees of Congress so that, after a man has served 10 years on one of the committees, far from using additional information which may have come his way during the proceedings against the Executive, he has become the mere mouthpiece of generals and admirals and officials concerned. It often takes corrective action from outside to bring some clean and clear air of discussion into the proceedings.

Mr. Cranley Onslow: I am following what the hon. Gentleman is saying about the American system, but can he relate it to affairs in this country by saying whether he foresees any dangers of the committees which we propose becoming secret?

Mr. Mendelson: I am coming to that by discussing the nature of the work of the committees proposed and I shall do it in my own time.

Mr. Heffer: Would not my hon. Friend agree that the difference between the American system and what is being suggested here is that the American Executive is separate from the Legislature? Surely there is no possibility of developing in this country the situation which has developed in the United States.

Mr. Mendelson: That is an argument put forward on many occasions, but in a short time, if I am given a chance, I will show why I think that at this early stage we can clearly foresee similar dangerous developments in our own system.
However, before doing so I will turn to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Nelson and Colne when he rejected the proposal that we should in any way introduce the American Congressional Committee system, but instead have specialist committees on the Continental system.
On three occasions, for periods of three months each, I was special correspondent for one of our weekly reviews in Bonn, in 1954, 1955 and 1956. I had the opportunity to study at close quarters the work of the Parliament of the Federal Republic then and again in 1959 and 1960. A number of specialist committees had been developed and some members of the German Parliament were very proud of them while others were immensely critical.
The committee which I studied particularly, from the outside, of course, was that on security and defence. What happened was that within only a few years there developed an upper crust of Members of Parliament, a group of people on the inside by virtue of belonging to the security and defence committee.
The Minister of Defence would say at the beginning of the committee's proceedings, "For the next half an hour what we shall discuss can be public knowledge and can be discussed between you and your colleagues and your constituents; for the hour after that we shall enter into the grey zone and while that will not be top secret, I would rather that you did not disclose any of the facts I shall mention in this committee; finally, for the last half an hour we shall discuss highly secret information and it would be a breach of the constitution and close to treason if you talked to any of your colleagues about the matters we shall then discuss".
That system was accepted and the result has been far from more members of the West German Parliament being in a position to criticise the executive on


these vital matters. Those not on the security and defence committee, except for two or three top leaders in each party, get no information on these matters worth having and those on the committees are handicapped by the prohibition and the very fact that they are members of the committee.
If we were to introduce a defence committee on those lines—and this is not contradicted by the most straightforward advocates of the system and I am sorry to mention his name when he is not here, but my right hon. Friend the Paymaster-General, while an advocate of such an all-party defence committee, has the clarity of mind not to disagree about what the result might be—the results would be quite obvious. The committee might have 30, 35 or 40 Members. They would be on the inside and would be not only taken into the confidence of the Minister of Defence more than all other Members who could then be called ordinary Members, if I may use the term, but would be taken to all sorts of establishments. While ordinary Members might be taken to those establishments and talked to by the Admiral, the members of the defence committee would be shown far more and would usually be there on condition of secrecy. Far from developing a whole new apparatus of detailed knowledge which Members could then use to redress the balance between the Legislature and the Executive, we should make the position of the Executive much more powerful than it has ever been.
In all periods, whenever the future and life of Parliament are being discussed, people rush into making ill-considered proposals for reform without making a close analysis of the difficulties. One of the major and decisive reasons why there has not been enough informed debate and revelation of detailed information in the House has to do with the fact that over many years the Front Bench of the party in opposition, whatever party, and the Front Bench of the Government of the day have been in basic agreement on many policies. This is not often mentioned, but quite obviously if the Leader of the Opposition in the Parliaments between 1959 and 1963, for example, on some of the most basic issues of defence and foreign policy, for instance, felt that he basically agreed with what

the Government were doing, he would not spend so much of his time revealing new facts and pushing for disclosures and so on.
The main duty and the main task in making Parliament the centre of debate are at all times on the shoulders of the leaders of the Opposition and the leaders of the Government and if those two Front Benches do not want to do it, it will not happen. Secondly, if we want to equip back benchers with better opportunities and better facilities to play their part we must make it easier for them to force the Government to disclose information and enter into real debate. This has to do with research services; this has to do with independent sources of information for back benchers; this has to do with a secretary for each Member of Parliament; this has to do with the possibility of Members of Parliament having more frequent interviews all over the country with people outside Government, but involved in Government policy. This is an avenue which would be worth exploration.
Specialist committees have another serious drawback which I have not yet mentioned. It is often asked by well-meaning people, particularly outside Parliament—we often get this question at meetings—"Why do you fellows not all get together? There are so many able people in Parliament on all sides and there is the common good. Why do you not appoint the ablest man to each job, irrespective of party and never minding about different philosophies which can be debated when you are at universities and in private friendships? When the job has to be done, why not get together and get the ablest from all parties and form a coalition Government?"
Behind that argument is the denial of the wisdom of hundreds of years and first developed in this House of Commons, the wisdom which tells us that it is essential that in the forum of national debate there should not be any blurring of policies by the getting together of people who believe that because they know a few more facts, they can now find a neutral solution to all major problems. This can be the complete abolition of one of the major if not the major purpose of the House, namely, to become a


centre, if necessary, of conscious agreement in times of national crisis, for instance, but at all times to carry on the great national debate on the great issues of the day.
It is thought that 35 Members of a specialist committee could oblige civil servants to appear before them and be cross-examined. However, my hon. Friends must not assume that because Ministers find it possible not to say to Members of Parliament in committee anything which they do not wish to say, Civil Servants will be any different. In fact they are normally the people who think up the basic answers for their Ministers who then put them forward in debate.
Therefore, there is nothing gained by this proposal. The idea, once got abroad, that in these committees, with expert advice, one could always get some sort of sensible agreement on what ought to be done, would stultify and falsify debate. Once this system had carried on for a number of years in committees, then, as Professor Beard points out, the committee debate would be the only important debate and there would be, when the matter finally reached the House of Commons, a charmed circle of those who had taken part in the debate repeating what they said there. Most of the other Members would be regarded as rather outside that circle. It would be the beginning of the destruction of one of the most important elements of the House of Commons, namely, the ability to produce a real political challenge from one side to the other, and if necessary, by a combination of Members, from the House to the Executive.
In these discussions there are always a number of people who say, "Yes, but if you think that this proposal would do serious harm to the most effective work that the House of Commons can do, what is your answer to this point?" Is it in fact proved that the Executive is acquiring more and more power vis-à-vis Parliament and the House of Commons in particular? I should like to make two brief points on that. First, it has been the main characteristic of our system of Government and the British constitution that the Executive has always had paramount influence and power in Parliament. Here I would say that a number of

academic teachers seem to make this discovery every 50 years or so.
One accepts that it is equally true that in the last 35 years or so, because of the advance in technology, and because of the large areas of secrecy which have become predominant, in the field of defence for instance, where there are smaller and smaller groups of people who know about the things that really matter, and about decisions that really matter; but the answer to that must be that Members of Parliament must be put in a position of acquiring more knowledge and having more independent sources of information so that they can be a match for the Executive, because they have information that they have come by in their own way.
I close by saying that we ought to direct our attention to the development of these services and facilities, and brush aside the dangerous proposal of specialist committees, which is irrelevant, and would not prove a solution to our problem.

7.43 p.m.

Mr. David Steel: When, last October, the Labour Government took office, there were some people in this country who thought that they would never sleep safe again in their beds at night. Pulsating, dynamic reform was to them a threat of bloody revolution. If there be any such people left tonight, I am sure that they will now sleep safely, having studied the Government's proposals for Parliamentary reform. They are timid and very modest indeed. I am conscious of the observation which was made by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Rushcliffe (Sir M. Redmayne), that the demand for reform, or the agitation for reform which has taken place in the last few years, outside of official bodies such as the Select Committee on Procedure, has not been on party lines at all, but has rather been a division between the newer and younger Members and the older Members. He pointed out to us that we should be prepared to listen to the wisdom of those who had spent a long time in this House. This is an argument of valid substance.
What depresses me when we discuss Parliamentary reform, either privately with other Members, or on public platforms, or in this House, is the attitude which I have found so often from other Members who say, "Well, my boy, I used


to think like you, but when you have been here as long as I have you will change your mind." This conjures up a picture of me in ten years time, at the ripe old age of 37, saying to some new Member who has just come into the House, "Well, my boy, I used to think like you, but when you have been here as long as I have", and so it goes on from decade to decade. There is no impetus, no inclination to undertake any study of serious fundamental reform.
We have had a most interesting discussion. The hon. Member for Penistone (Mr. Mendelson) spoke on the rôle of specialised committees. Although the Committee on Procedure Reports have turned this suggestion down, if the full Report is studied it will be found that it did not so much turn this suggestion down as turn down any suggestion that the whole question of specialised committees should be thoroughly investigated, which is a slight difference. The minority of four, of whom I was one, suggested that the Committee should obtain further evidence on these matters, from such sources as the Congress of the U.S.A. and the Legislatures of Canada, Western Germany and France. This was really all that we suggested. It was not a suggestion that the system of specialised committees should be adopted, but merely that we should be willing to investigate them thoroughly and to find out some of the weaknesses which have been mentioned, and see whether we could not adapt the idea to the particular traditions of this House.
While accepting the arguments advanced by the hon. Member for Penistone on the dangers of this ingrowing of specialised committees, I think that he will also concede that he accepted the most easy example of this in dealing with a specialised committee on defence. Obviously matters of national security and so on are called into play. This is the easiest example to take in which the dangers of ingrowing are most obvious.
On other aspects of government I think that this danger is not so great. The Government have rejected the modest suggestions from the Committee on Procedure, that within the present Estimates Committee we should turn towards specialisation. I think that I heard the Lord President correctly when

he said that it would be an unfortunate precedent to have committees studying policy as well as administration. I would submit that we have a precedent for this within the House, in the form of the Scottish Grand Committee, which discusses broad matters of policy as well as simply technical administration. I do not think it is correct to say that there is no precedent for establishing committees outside this Chamber which can discuss matters of policy.
I was interested in the speech of the hon. Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Michael Foot), who, very correctly, is very concerned that we should re-establish the Floor of the House of Commons as the centre of power, the centre of debate, and gave as examples the fact that we have not been able to have immediate debates on foreign affairs, and other matters of immediate national interest. In my submission we cannot expect to have these opportunities of debates quickly and flexibly; we cannot expect to reassert the position of the Floor of the House of Commons unless we can take away from it the detailed discussion of things like the Purchase Tax on ice cream, which may come up in an annual Finance Bill, and which may weary us through night after night. This is the danger which is being ignored in asserting that everything should take place on the Floor of the House of Commons—that we overload the Floor of the House of Commons, and therefore cannot see the wood for the trees and cannot give the matters of real national and immediate importance discussion because we are so busy dealing with other matters, which could more competently be dealt with in committees elsewhere.
I would like to add my own disagreement to the Government proposal to change the time of the Ten Minute Rule Bills, and the disagreement of such of my Liberal colleagues as I have been able to consult in this matter today. I feel it would be best left as, it is at present. Even though the Government's proposal is only an experiment, I hope that perhaps in view of the opinions expressed in this debate, they might proceed no further with it.

7.50 p.m.

Mr. Michael English: The interesting thing about this debate is that, in effect, it is founded


upon the report of a specialist committee. Nobody has yet seen fit to mention the fact that according to the opponents of specialist committees this debate should not be taking place.
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Penistone (Mr. Mendelson) on presenting to us, for the first time in this debate—the whole of which I have sat through—a cogent and well-argued case against the specialist committee. He has put the case as fairly as it can be put, but in my opinion he has merely made a very good job of a very weak case. He said that because Members in the United States Congress sit in specialist committees they do a terrible thing—they meet Ministers and Members of the Government. In this assembly we do that every day of our lives. Every Member of this House knows every Minister of Her Majesty's Government far better than any member of Congress tends to know the overwhelming majority of the members of the Cabinet of the United States. Let us be clear about that.

Mr. Mendelson: I have never said anything critical about meeting or mixing with Ministers. What I said was that a Minister of Defence or a Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs under the American and German systems tells the members of the specialist committee, in closed session, a lot of things which he then binds them not to reveal to their colleagues.

Mr. English: The hon. Member for Roxburgh, Selkirk and Peebles (Mr. David Steel) answered that point when he said that the hon. Member for Penistone chose the particular case of defence. We should not forget that we constantly indulge in the sort of practice which my hon. Friend mentioned. On both sides there are specialist groups of Members who very often meet Ministers—if they are Government supporters—or Opposition leaders—if they are Opposition members—in order to discuss specific topics, such as housing or defence. The real purpose of a specialist committee is to put together many of these people, with one other distinction, namely, the publication of some of the discussions that are held at present in two halves on either side of the House. To the extent that

a subject does or does not arouse controversy, it is something which will work itself out in practice.
Some of the case against specialist committees is unanswerable, because the case has been put from two opposite directions. My hon. Friend the Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Michael Foot) says that the publicity which would attach to specialist committees would detract from the importance of the House of Commons itself. He wants to televise the House, whereas my hon. Friend the Member for Penistone told us, on a former occasion, that he does not. His objection is that the committees would be meeting in secret. This is what happens at the moment, with back-bench groups of both parties. I fail to see that one could possibly imagine a situation in which one could defend a specialist committee on any ground if it were going to meet at one and the same time both in public and in secret.
The situation is that in logic one suits one's case to the need arising at the time. It is conceivable that one might have a defence committee meeting in secret in order to hear certain things. I am certain that it is also conceivable that one would have the committee meeting in public on other occasions. It is now the practice for our Select Committees to meet in private. It has been the practice since the last war, but it was not the practice before then. Circumstances change according to the requirements of society and the desire of the House, and it would be the desire of the House and its Members who form the committees that would determine under what conditions those committees met.
We are also told that it is not the Members who form the Committees that matter, but the class society that we are creating—that we are creating a society in which some Members will be on Committees and some Members will not. In my opinion there are sufficient Departments of Her Majesty's Government to provide places for every Member who wants one.
I shall not put forward all the arguments in detail, but I say that the Select Committee did not take either extreme. It did not say, on the one hand, "Let us have no change at all; let us have complete conservatism" or, on the other hand, "Let us go the whole hog with


a specialist committee system, invented out of thin air." The Select Committee suggested a reasonable compromise and, what hurts me most of all as a member of that Select Committee—and I agree with the right hon. Member for Rushcliffe (Sir M. Redmayne) on this—is that this compromise, representing the good old British step on the way towards a change, whereby we might see whether any of the fears expressed by hon. Members are true, has been rejected.
I suggest that there are occasions when we might have another debate on the principle itself, with, perhaps, a free vote of the House on the issue. We do not have any Motion on this issue specifically before us, although it would be valuable if we did.
In this age the whole procedure of science in this country is by way of controlled experiment. What a good idea it would be to set up a controlled experiment in this case. Let us have specialist committees for certain Departments and not for others, and see if we can draw any comparison. Let us see if there is not some merit in the scientific method. We could see whether the fears expressed by certain hon. Members are true or whether the desires and hopes of many of us are true. We could test the situation.

7.56 p.m.

Mr. Cranley Onslow: It is clear from the debate that no one party or large group in this House possesses a monopoly of the desire to improve or reform our procedures. This desire spreads across the whole House and covers the whole range of experience, even if it is also clear that if certain proposals were to be carried out we should need two Houses of Commons—one to get on with the work of governing the country while the other was being reorganised.
Although we may welcome some of the proposals of the Leader of the House we must recognise that they are drawn up and biased in favour of the Front Bench establishment and against the back benches, Even the Second Reading Committee proposals which might possibly save time on the Floor could do so only in order to provide more time for the Government of the day. They are not likely to be invoked very often, or to save a great deal of time.
The most disturbing point about the proposals which the Leader of the House has put before us concerns the question of specialist committees. I believe the fears of encroachment into matters of policy have been exaggerated, that the arguments deployed against the so-called specialist committees are inflated, and that we should be able to consider the question and come to a decision on it more easily and effectively if we tried to establish what we are attempting to do.
I believe that what we are attempting to do is to restore power to ourselves—power which we have lost owing to the growth and the gross inflation of the Civil Service in a complex society. Our object should be to try to recreate a situation in which the Government of the day are forced to justify their administration in depth, and in which there is not necessarily a quarrel on policy, but simply on method. All hon. Members who are present will probably agree that it is now exceptionally difficult for Parliament to penetrate the protective fog of Whitehall. We can appreciate this particularly at Question Time. Many Questions are tabled—however many there may be by an individual Member—with the aim of getting into the Administration and finding out what is going on in order to pinpoint something that is obviously wrong.
I do not believe that any comfort is to be drawn from proposals which may or may not be laid before us in the fairly near future to establish an ombudsman. What we should be concerned with is exposing and rooting out inefficiency in the Civil Service. I do not refer to misconduct, but to straightforward inefficiency. That is our greatest enemy, and its defeat is the greatest task which an ordinary Member of Parliament can hope to engage in. He can seek to make the administrative machine more efficient and more fair in its effect upon his constituents' daily lives.
The need to do this is more important even than the need to provide time for two more back benchers to take part in debates, as we can over-estimate the importance of what we say here in debate. I am prepared—perhaps even those who have already spoken would be prepared—to concede that our words will not shake the world. Even the hon. Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Michael Foot), whose


contributions we always value and who would be such an attraction on television—he might be put on at the same time as "Steptoe & Son" and "Coronation Street" by B.B.C.2 if they could obtain his services—might be persuaded to admit that there is no one to be convinced in debate, that nothing is likely to be achieved in the positive sense.
I must not embarrass the hon. and learned Member for Northampton (Mr. Paget), but I would mention that there are occasions when hon. Members fail to be convinced in debate. That is a valuable purpose of debate. Sometimes hon. Members do feel that they cannot bring themselves to follow their Front Bench into the appropriate Lobby. In that sense debate is useful. But there is not much argument to be won and there is little impact to be made deep in the vitals of the Civil Service—which is where we should be making our presence felt.
I think that it is becoming clearer and clearer that morning sittings will not be of great value to us as a House, that they would not improve our efficiency, that if we are kept late at night this is often because the Government of the day is inefficient and not because Parliament is inefficient. I believe that it is essential in any consideration in future of the question of morning sittings that we should remember how important many members of the public regard their right of access to the Palace of Westminster, which they exercise very freely during the weekday mornings. We must also remember how important it is that whatever reforms we introduce into our procedure, we should not take out of that procedure the vital element, the test that it can impose on the stamina and resolution of the Government's own supporters, no matter which Government it may be, and that this test of time which is built into our procedure is something we ought to cherish.
As for Early Day Motions, it would not matter very much if some sort of "guillotine" were imposed on them at 8 p.m. I am certain that the number of Early Day Motions reflects only the number of hon. Members kept in the House late at night. They while away the hours exercising their ingenuity. But if the Leader of the House would consider a possible compromise—he may be in a compromising mood—would it not

be possible for Early Day Motions bearing 10 signatures, or nine so as to accommodate the Liberal Party, to be accepted rather closer to the hour of midnight than those Early Day Motions—and there is a considerable number which seem to find their way on to the Order Paper—which bear only one signature, and which languish there, blooming but completely unseen?
But probably the best and most valuable contribution which we as Members could make to the more effective procedures of the House would be to keep our speeches shorter.

8.4 p.m.

Mr. Trevor Park: On the last day of our Session before we rose for the Summer Recess, an event occurred which was probably unique in the whole history of Parliament. When the late Speaker and many hon. Members went to another place to hear the Royal Commission, some Members of the House remained behind in order to use the occasion to express their opposition to the archaic ritualism and ceremonialism in which many of our procedures are engulfed. Technically, this was a "non-event". It is not recorded in the columns of the OFFICIAL REPORT and the House took no official cognisance of it, because from a technical point of view it had not happened.
However, non-event or not, I believe that that incident was in many ways much more significant than some of the matters which are officially regarded as having taken place during the last 12 months. It reflected the feelings of the overwhelming majority of new Members of the House that the time had come for a basic reappraisal of all our procedures and all our methods of operation, that the time had come for the House to bring itself forward into the second half of the twentieth century and no longer to preserve merely for old time's sake certain methods and forms of working which, however much they might have had justification two or three hundred years ago, can certainly not be justified in the conditions of today.
Old institutions—and Parliament is an old institution—have a habit of falling captive to their own past. We need to ask, what is the purpose today of procedures which have been cherished for so long? We need to ask whether any


longer in current terms it is possible to defend many of the ways in which we operate. An instance of the various stages of the legislative process. At a time when the annual load of legislative activity was very much lighter than it is today, it may well have been defensible that all Bills should go through the same stages—through Second Reading, Committee, Report and Third Reading.
It may have been defensible that, in most cases, these stages should all be taken on the Floor of the House. But nowadays, when the web of Government spans a much broader area than it did in those days, when the annual amount of legislative activity is so much heavier, can we continue to defend this process? The Report of the Select Committee on Procedure, in recommending, in some cases and in certain conditions, that Bills should have their Second Reading in a Standing Committee, made one move in the right direction by revising the traditional legislative process at least for those Bills. But I do not believe that the Motions which the Leader of the House moved or the proposals contained in the Select Committee Reports go far enough.
Could we not consider, for instance, the possibility of Bills themselves being far less detailed and technical than in many cases they are today? Could we not consider the possibility of dealing by way of Statutory Instrument rather than legislative enactment with some of the detailed points which are now included in the text of the Bills? If we can establish in certain cases Second Reading in Standing Committee, is it not also feasible to consider having Report stage in Standing Committee and, indeed, to consider Amendments from the other place also in Standing Committee? If we were to do this we would speed up the legislative process and we should enable more time to be available in this Chamber for debates on more general topics.
What is true of the legislative process is equally true of the system of voting. The present voting system pre-dates the party system as we know it. The present voting system—the business of tramping through the Lobbies—in which we spent many hours a few months ago, assumes that each Member is making an individual, independent choice in determining the way in which he will vote. That might have been true many years ago.

It certainly is not true today. We vote in accordance with the mandates of our party. We vote in accordance with the political principles which we place before the electors and which the electors send us here to represent. We vote in these ways because we are party representatives. Cannot we recognise this by revising our voting system?
It may be too early for hon. Members to accept the kind of change which I personally have in mind in which one would assume the support of an hon. Member for his party unless he informs Mr. Speaker otherwise. It may be as yet too advanced a proposition for the House to consider, but I believe that at the very least we should consider abolishing the wasteful and tedious process of tramping through the lobbies and that we ought to consider whether it is possible for a modern electro-mechanical voting system to be used which would cut down very considerably the time which is taken by voting under the present antiquated arrangements.
I could continue on other points, but I will briefly mention only two. The House would agree that it would be welcome if hon. Members made brief and concise speeches. I am attempting to do my best to provide a model in this respect. But we all know that there are some hon. Members who make not brief, concise speeches but tedious and repetitive orations. As an experiment, would it not be possible at certain stages in debates for a time limit to be imposed on backbench speeches—possibly for the final hour of each major debate? This would enable more hon. Members to participate than are able to participate today, and it would perhaps do no harm at all to the somewhat verbose hon. Members who would then be impelled to put forward much more encapsulated and in all probability, therefore, much more valuable contributions than they put forward now.
I also hope that a future Select Committee on Procedure will look at the traditional system whereby Bills which have not completed all their legislative stages are killed off at the end of a Session. The result may well be that the House has wasted hours and possibly days in consideration and debate which have led to nothing at all. Why should it not be


possible for the Government to put forward resolutions at the end of a Session carrying over certain Bills to the following Session? If this were done—and it would be done only with the consent of the House—a great deal of time would be saved and the operations of the House would become more efficient.
The Select Committee, the Report of which we are considering, has only scratched the surface of the problem. In its third Report it suggests that there is a need for a more comprehensive review of the entire working of Parliamentary procedure than was possible by the Select Committee last year. I profoundly hope that this need is met and that a new Select Committee on procedure will review the whole field, because this is a subject which goes wider and deeper than merely the question of the revision of rules. This is a matter which involves the effectiveness of democracy. We need to restore the reputation of the House as a forum of national debate and decision. We need to arrest the trend of power from Westminster to Whitehall.
There is a need for the elected representatives of the people to influence the climate in which governmental decisions are made at least as much as the climate is influenced by civil servants, by advisory committees and by outside pressure groups. I believe that by reforming the procedure by bringing ourselves up to date, and by thinking more of the future of Parliament than of its past, we can preserve the freedom and democracy to which all of us, irrespective of party ties, are dedicated.

8.16 p.m.

Sir Hugh Monro-Lucas-Tooth: The hon. Member for Derbyshire, South-East (Mr. Park) spoke of wasteful tramping through the Division Lobbies. Some day, perhaps, he will be a Minister, and he will find that the few minutes made available by a Division are not without their use.
I find extraordinarily little public knowledge of and interest in the rules of the House. A great many of my constituents, and I think of the constituents of other hon. Members, think that we spend our time sitting in this Chamber listening to one another. As a Member for a London constituency I have occasion to show

people in here to hear a debate about this time of night, and their first exclamation is always, "Where are all the Members?" I suppose that this lack of knowledge and interest in inevitable. All rules of procedure are necessarily fairly technical, but it is very unfortunate that this should be so because it is the rules of procedure of the House which are the basis of our civil liberties, and those rules could easily be undermined. It is not the mere existence of Parliament which ensures our freedom but the way in which we do our job here. If Parliament becomes inefficient or impotent, the first thing which will suffer will be our personal freedom as citizens.
I will not base my argument on the view that the power of the Executive is too great. On the contrary, I recognise that the power of the Executive is great and I believe that, whether we like it or not, it will grow greater. I do not see any help for that. I do not like it, but I think it quite inevitable. But if it is inevitable, then that is the best reason why we should ensure that we make the machinery for the supervision of the Executive by Parliament as modern and as strong as it can be.
As I see it, we have three essential functions. The first is to choose an Executive, a Government; the second is to criticise legislative proposals by the Government; the third is to criticise the administrative policy and actions of the Government under the law as it is. This Parliament is often referred to as the Legislature. It has been referred to during the debate at the Legislature. We are not a legislature; we do not make the laws, for that would be quite impossible under modern conditions. Laws are made by the Government and are brought by the Government to the House, and all we can do is to criticise them, improve them maybe, and either refuse them or pass them. But we do not make them. Our procedure must enable these other purposes to be served simultaneously, though there is a good deal of conflict between the purposes. There is the conflict of time, to which reference has been made. If we spend a great deal of our time criticising legislation, we will obviously have difficulty finding time to criticise administration.
There are deeper conflicts than that. To give an example, the power of the


House to choose a Government rests on our power to dismiss a Government—in the sense of making it impossible for that Government to carry on—by voting against their proposals. This very power to dismiss a Government is itself stultifying our power to criticise a Government because if we criticise too much, if we vote against their Measures too much, we obviously intend to stop that Government from doing their job. Nowadays any Government can say—indeed, always say—"This Measure is essential to our policy" and in that way every Government makes it almost impossible for any of their supporters to vote against them.
We have seen examples of that this Session. While I will not refer to them because I do not wish to be controversial, one need only look at the work in another place. Sharp criticism, even voting, cannot have the effect of bringing the life of a Government to an end and we see growing influence and importance there. We may or may not like this, and while on the whole the influence of this House has tended to fall because of our power to dismiss a Government, the influence of the other place has, for the reason I have explained, tended to increase. This is something which we must watch carefully. I have often wondered if we could correct this position and if there was anything in our procedures to enable us to do so. I do not think that it could be dealt with by procedure. The remedy would probably be something like a fixed term for a Parliament, but that is outside our debate today and perhaps we can return to it on another occasion.
There is another serious conflict between the functions we must perform which is also caused by the increasing responsibility of Government. The duties of hon. Members are becoming so onerous that service in this House is becoming a full-time matter. When I first came here, as long ago as 1924, the leading men in all walks of life thought it their duty to come to this House at some time and do a stint of work here. The leading lawyers, leading industrialists, leading figures in the City and leading trade unionists, too, all came here for a certain spell. With rare exceptions, that is no longer the case. There are very few leaders in any walk of life who can now come to this House. It is impossible for them to continue to do their jobs outside and do the

work that is necessary here. I am not talking only of distinguished leaders. What I say is equally true to a large extent of those engaged in many other spheres.
I hope that the House will forgive me if I give my personal experience. I am the chairman of the governors of a school, of a charity, and I also try to carry on a business which is concerned with overseas trade. These may not be considered to be important matters, but it is exceedingly difficult for me to do my duty here and at the same time carry on those jobs. I believe that it is working at jobs of that sort that enables hon. Members to do their job properly here. At any rate, I tell my constituents that. I state it on the front of my election address and they seem to believe me.
I am not criticising those who come here without having outside jobs, but we are tending to become a body of professional politicians briefed by others outside the House. We are losing the experience and contact with outside activities which we used to have as hon. Members, and any action which tends to increase that tendency is bad. In particular, morning sittings would, I suggest, make it impossible for those with outside activities to be hon. Members.
At the same time, I fully admit the other side. If this House is to be representative of the people of the country there must be a proportion of people here from all walks of life. We must have coal miners, teachers and a great many others who, by the nature of things, cannot carry on their jobs while they are here.
Here is the dilemma—how to conduct our business in such a way that we can have in this House, as we should have, those connected with outside activities and who work at them and those who wish to come here on a full-time basis and who wish to work full time here? I believe that this is not an insoluble dilemma and that the recommendations made by the Select Committee are moving in the direction of finding the solution. It is that a great deal of the work which was formerly, and is even now, done on the Floor of the House could better be done elsewhere. We have seen large movements in that direction this century. All Bills used, not so long ago, to be taken on the Floor of the House. Very


few are now taken here but in Standing Committee. We have seen Select Committees on Public Accounts, Estimates and the Nationalised Industries all doing work which formerly had to be done on the Floor of the House or not at all.
I am not for a moment suggesting that the Select Committee on Estimates or any development from that can do the work of the Committee of Supply. It cannot. The Committee of Supply obviously must deal with policy and the Select Committee on Estimates cannot deal with policy. I think that I speak for all members of the Select Committee on Procedure, of which I was a member, when I say that we all thought it quite impossible for any Select Committee to deal with policy as the House can.
On the other hand, that does not mean that we ought not to have a very thorough inquiry into a great many things for which the Government are responsible. My right hon. Friend the Member for Guildford (Sir R. Nugent) pointed out that there was a wide difference between inquiring into the nationalised industries and inquiring into a Government Department, and with that I agree. On the other hand, many Government Departments are responsible for matters much more like the nationalised industries. We have things like hospitals, the Atomic Energy Authority and the Post Office, and hon. Members can think of many things that can be looked at in much the same way as a nationalised industry.
It is of the greatest importance that hon. Members should be able to make themselves fully conversant with what is going on inside the Departments if they are to discuss policy on the Floor of the House. There is, therefore, an immense field of work here, work which ought to be done but work which I do not think is at present being done nearly as thoroughly as it should be or might be if the Fourth Report were fully implemented. For that reason I entirely agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Sir M. Redmayne).
If we have such a system I believe that the right thing is to have a great deal of committee work going on, not on the Floor of the House but elsewhere, during the morning. In that way we would have some hon. Members who concentrated on committee work within the

House, others who brought their knowledge and experience from outside, and all contributing to the debates together. That, indeed, is the time-honoured way in which we conduct our affairs. The corollary to this, which I do not think has yet been suggested, is that if we have that system the work done on these committees should be paid for. Indeed, I believe that there is a very strong case for saying that proper fees should be paid to hon. Members who sit on Standing Committees now. If that system were extended we would be going in the direction of a solution of our problem.
I am glad that a time limit on notice of Questions is to be set, but I very much regret that the Government have not seen their way to put a limit on the number of Questions which each Member may ask. However sternly the rules are enforced by Mr. Speaker, I do not believe that the present proposals will be sufficient to prevent the present trouble, which is quite adequately described in the Second Report. Put simply, it is that there are too many Questions for it to be possible to answer them in the space of one hour. We did not diagnose the cause of this trouble—we had to report in rather a hurry. We tried to report by, I think, Easter.
There is a tendency, which has been expressed today, to believe that the pressure on Question Time will case off; that natural causes, or something like that, will make things easier in another Session. I do not believe for one moment that that is so. The increasing field of Government activities will mean that Members will want to put down more and more Questions. Further, the professsionalisation of which I have already spoken will mean that Members individually will want to put down more and more Questions for their own reasons. Those tendencies are here, and here permanently, and both will increase.
A few years ago I asked an hon. Member who is not here now but who was a very regular questioner, how many other regular questioners there were. He said that he had calculated that there were just over 30. If hon. Members will look at Table 8 in page 14 of the Second Report they will find from the last column that in the 1962–63 Session 51 Members between them asked 46 per cent. of all the Questions, and that in


the 1963–64 Session 56 Members asked 51 per cent. of all the Questions. In other words, about one-tenth of the Members asked over half the Questions, and that tendency is increasing all the time.
Whatever else may be said, whether this is fair or unfair, it is certainly an undue share of the time available. If it is suggested that the remedy is that other Members should compete with them, it will only make things very much worse. I feel sure that the only real remedy for the problem is that of rationing. The Select Committee proposed 80 Questions per Session. As a matter of fact, there were only 23 Members who asked as many Questions as that last year, so it would not be a very serious burden on anyone. If hon. Members care to work out who those Members are, I do not think they will change their opinion.
Objection can be taken that there are genuine cases when it is necessary for a Member to put down a great many Questions. Some hon. Members will remember Mr. Peter Smithers, when he was Member for Winchester, conducting a campaign—I am glad to say successfully—to prevent gas being stored under Winchester. I have made inquiries about the details of that case and, if hon. Members care to take my figures, they are these. Mr. Smithers asked eight Quesfor oral answer during the whole of that campaign, which extended slightly over a month and is therefore slightly under the ration now proposed. Of those Questions, only six were answered orally. The rest of the campaign consisted of astute supplementaries put by him and interventions during the statement on business, with which no one is proposing to interfere. It is fair to say, too, that had that occurred during the present Session and had he been confronted with the same situation, he could not possibly have conducted such a campaign, because he would not have got in six or even two Questions.
I hope that the Government will have second thoughts. Sooner or later, they will be driven to do so, and the sooner it is the better, because the present situation is seriously interfering with all hon. Members in their work.

8.38 p.m.

Mr. Leo Abse: In the few minutes during which I shall detain the

House, I want to turn away from the general matters that have been raised by the hon. Member for Hendon, South (Sir H. Monro Lucas-Tooth) and refer to one particular aspect of the proposals before the House. I am deeply concerned with the proposal that the Ten Minute Rule should be interfered with in the way suggested. It is an attempt to shift our only right to initiate legislation away from the centre of the Parliamentary stage to the shadowy, empty wings. I do not regard it merely as a procedural change, because it is part of a whole process which for 100 years has led to the devaluation of the Member's role, to the reduction of his decision-making capacity, and to the strengthening of the whole oligarchic tendencies which are inherent in the modern political system.
I find it ironic, particularly from a Committee upon which such hon. Members as the hon. Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Michael Foot) sat, that we should have a proposal which has been suggested, apparently, as helping to modernise Parliament and trying to increase the importance of the back bencher, but which is taking away the sole remaining opportunity that a Member has as of right, as distinct from chance, to be a legislator.
It is part of the historical process of a century ago that a private Member could defy his Whip with impunity. He was genuinely responsible to his conscience and genuinely responsible to his constituents. He spoke always within wide limits as he wished., and it was this independence on his part which gave the House in those days not only its particular collective character but made an important check on the Executive.
With the growth of the party system every hon. Member's independence has inevitably and particularly been eroded while at the same time that erosion has first strengthened the Executive, then diminished the power of the Executive, and now placed it where it enormously reinforces the Premiership. With the discipline such as we have today, when the House is so nicely and evenly divided, I am not surprised that an hon. Member should put forward the proposition that since we have party allegiance we need not bother to go into the Lobbies at all. I find this an extraordinary suggestion, but the hon. Member has in fact met the realities of the situation where,


in consequence of the tightening up of the party system with party discipline higher in a House so nicely and evenly divided, the independent Member becomes nothing more than Lobby fodder.
Of course, I am not prepared to look at the growth of this power as inevitable and necessary when party loyalties, patronage and the centralisation and unification of a powerful Civil Service administration conspires to extinguish the Member's decision-making capacity. Nor do I regard it as a process which cannot be arrested, but it means that on each occasion when the Executive moves forward to take away the right of an individual hon. Member the action of this House should be to obstruct any such attempt made on the part of the Executive.
Take the little Ten-Minute Rule we are talking about, which is regarded as a comparatively unimportant change. The Ten-Minute Rule itself came into existence as a restriction imposed upon individual hon. Members. It was a restriction which came about because there was an attempt to clamp down upon a minority view—upon the Irish view. It was because the Irish were using the House in order to put forward their own campaign that this Ten-Minute Rule was brought in and the right to initiate legislation on the part of the private Member was limited to a Tuesday and Wednesday.

Sir Kenneth Pickthorn: The hon. Member will, if he is accurate, inform the House also that the Ten Minute Rule, having been abolished for the purposes of the war, was re-established by the first vote which defeated the post-war Labour Government.

Mr. Abse: I am coming to the point and will develop the history. I would not expect the historian of the House not to be aware of the matter. Do not let the House think that the battles which have taken place over the Ten Minute Rule were something in which the House engaged as some little affray. We are participating in a long historical process and we should not easily abandon this right without having some understanding of what has gone before, even if the Committee appears to have ignored it in an extraordinary way. After that restriction had been placed on private Members

it led to the creation of this Ten Minute Rule and we had, as the right hon. Member for Carlton (Sir K. Pickthorn) has pointed out, attack made upon it in each war—on both occasions.
Once we had a situation in which there could be an authoritarian Government, at that moment there was always an attack made on this rule. It was done in the First World War and in the Second World War. It occurred immediately in the "Phoney War" in November 1939, Chamberlain wanted to end completely for the period of the war the possibility of hon. Members to introduce legislation under the Ten Minute Rule. Hon. Members should know that when that came about Clem Attlee opposed it most vigorously. His words should be remembered. In November, 1939, he advanced this argument against extinguishing the Rule during the period of the war:
Will the introduction of a Bill by Members under the Ten Minute Rule … really do anything to hamper the proper carrying on of the war? I suggest nothing of the sort. I believe it is an extremely useful thing that legislative proposals should be brought before this House quickly and with certainty.… It may be said it is futile because the Bills will go no further, but in this House there are always a great many Bills introduced which go no further. It is a method of ventilating a question and of putting proposals before this House in a concrete form. I think it is a desirable thing. There is no reason to think it will unduly impinge on the time of Government business, and I do not agree that we ought to be bound by the precedent of the Parliament that sat in the last war."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 29th November, 1939; Vol. 355, cc. 98–9]
That was during a wartime period.

Sir K. Pickthorn: What happened when the war was over? The Labour Government put the Whips on.

Mr. Abse: Let me continue. I ask hon. Members to remember how long it was before we were able to win back our right to the Ten Minue Rule. It was taken away for a temporary period during the war, just as this is supposed to be an experiment. The House should be warned against such experiments. I say to the credit of the Conservative Party, and no doubt the right hon. Member for Carlton played a prominent rôle in getting it back—

Sir K. Pickthorn: I did.

Mr. Abse: I acknowledge it. It took until 1950 to get it back. The then Leader


of the House, Herbert Morrison, tried to persuade the House that it still should not give private Members the Ten Minute Rule, but he was not listened to by the majority of the House and he was defeated by a narrow margin. That is how we got it back. The Executive has always been concerned to contain this right. It did it, as the Leader of the House said, in 1960, when it imposed the limitation that only one Bill could be introduced per day, not two, and that extra notice had to be given.
The Executive is now at it again, because once again it wants to extinguish this right and put in into limbo. Once the Ten Minute Rule is transferred to where it is suggested it should go—immediately before the Adjournment debate—that will be the end of the effectiveness and the purpose of the Ten Minute Rule.
It is futile to argue that the Ten Minute Rule is of no use. History shows that it has not only brought about valuable Acts such as the Vagrancy Act and the Infanticide Act. It even brought about an Act to control red biddy in Scotland. A number of useful Acts have been introduced in this way.
Even more important, as my hon. Friend the Member for Nelson and Colne (Mr Sydney Silverman) has pointed out, it was through the medium of the Ten Minute Rule that he initiated the process which will lead, within the next few days, I trust, to the abolition of the death penalty. The Ten Minute Rule is one of the few ways we have of throwing immediate and important issues into the arena. What use is it for my hon. Friend the Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Michael Foot) to talk about the need for urgency and the need to bring debates on to the Floor of the House with great speed when the Select Committee, of which he was a member, has recommended that one of the few ways of bringing a burning issue before the House immediately be extinguished?
It is a method of commanding the attention of the public. Last Session it was deployed to direct attention to issues such as abortion, divorce, homo-sexuality, and infanticide. Those subjects may not be regarded as important by party managers, but they are regarded

as important by large sections of the community. They are matters of discussion by the public and by the Press. Is it to be said that the House will exclude such issues?
Are we going to say that we are going to give an opportunity to hon. Members to evade and avoid becoming involved in issues which they know to be controversial? The Ten Minutes procedure can be and is being used in that area of legislation which impinges on human relationships and it is precisely the occasion when if one takes a stand either way one is bound to provoke some opposition from some of one's constituents. Therefore, if we transfer the Ten Minute Rule occasion from the middle of the day and put it at the tag end of the day all those who wish to avoid these issues will welcome such a proposal, but if we retain it in the middle of the day people will have to stand up and be counted, as they should be counted.
If we allow this Motion to go through in its present form so that we consign the Ten Minute Rule procedure to limbo we shall be doing a disservice to our successors, and we should remember that we act not only for ourselves in deciding these procedural matters. We shall do a disservice to the House because it will be believed outside that the private Member's rôle is being further encroached upon and that this House is dodging issues which the public think should be stirred up.
I hope that the House will examine how much time this process takes. My right hon. Friend the Leader of the House talked about its taking 40 minutes. He was not as fair as he usually is. Figures on the record as a result of the good work of the Clerks show that of 43 Ten Minute Rule Bills brought before the House 35 took an average of 8·5 minutes and the balance, which involved Divisions, took less than a half hour on average. To suggest as a reason for getting rid of the Ten Minute Rule as at present practised that time is so precious for back benchers does not bear examination.
I should like to refer briefly to other general issues. I interpret the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Ebbw Vale as meaning that the less one knows about a subject the more authority one has for expressing opinion


on the Floor of the House. This is not a thesis which commends itself to me. My hon. Friend was insisting upon the rights of individual Members and insisting that if Members gain greater expertise and more specialised knowledge in the way suggested we shall be devaluing this Chamber. I do not see the danger in that way. I have already seen the Chamber being devalued by the way in which individual Members are not able to influence policies and have insufficient opportunities to influence the Executive.
I believe that my hon. Friend is being a romantic in putting forward a view which perhaps could be put forward by a man of the Renaissance but which has no relevance to the sophisticated politics of the twentieth century in which we have to live. The very complexities of society today mean that people have to be better informed and better equipped, otherwise we shall be powerless before the Executive. Unless we are in a position to acquire this knowledge and equip ourselves with more information, the Executive can play ducks and drakes with us on the Floor of the House. The minority suggestion that we should start examining what is happening in Legislatures in other parts of the world is valuable and should be taken up at a time when we know the inadequacies of our present system. Is it not time that we emancipated ourselves from xenophobic attitudes and began to see what we can learn from other Legislatures? This can and should be done. If we do not, the rôle of the back bencher may be dimished yet further, and we can all begin to feel that we have nothing to do but, as one hon. Member almost proposes now, press a button and go home.

8.55 p.m.

Sir Robert Cary: I hope that the hon. Member for Pontypool (Mr. Abse) will not expect me to follow him in the refinements of the argument surrounding the Ten Minute Rule Bill procedure. I begin by joining with the Leader of the House in congratulating the members of the Select Committee on the excellent Reports which they have produced and the material which they have provided for the debate we are having today which, I think, ought to be one of many devoted to this subject.
The propellant behind the whole of this discussion is that, at the beginning of a new Parliament, there is a feeling of frustration and of difficulty, a feeling that the voice of the private Member is not heard, that information is not available to him, that the authority of the Executive grows greater and wider, and, if more Government Departments are created, will become greater and wider still. My own sentiments in this debate go, to a large extent, with those expressed by the hon. Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Michael Foot). We ought to try to make the Chamber of the House of Commons a more effective instrument than it is at present. I can well understand my right hon. Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Sir M. Redmayne) joining with the hon. Member for Ebbw Vale in that vote in the Select Committee when theirs were the two voices against the remainder of the Committee in taking the decision it did, because, in essence, their wish was to make this Chamber a more effective instrument in attacking or scrutinising the views and policies of the Executive.
I believe it to be against the interests of Parliament to attempt to set up specialist committees which would detract from the work which ought to be done on the Floor of the House and which would, in my opinion, contribute nothing in preparing a Member of the House to make himself better informed. The problem is not here just for this Parliament. It was here twenty years ago. As a young Member then, one went through exactly the same experience. One felt that one could not make much impression, either by Question or by speech, on the views of the Executive. I took great trouble as an individual to make myself self-sufficient. I even made, at my own expense on a slender budget, journeys abroad to places like Singapore and Simonstown only to find, at the end of that experience, as my hon. Friend the Member for Leicester, South-East (Mr. Peel) observed, that I was the prisoner of security. While making myself personally better informed, I found that, in returning to debates in the House, my frustration was, perhaps, even greater because the knowledge put in my possession by the Government and their agencies as I made my personal reconnaissances literally sealed my lips when I participated in debate on the Floor.
The problems that we have been examining today are not new either to this Parliament or the one which preceded it. Some of my hon. Friends, in particular my hon. Friend the Member for Carlton (Sir K. Pickthorn), will recall that during the war such distinguished Parliamentarians of the past as Mr. L. S. Amery were lecturing on what would be required to make Parliament a more effective body in future. If I remember rightly, Mr. Amery was then recommending a separate industrial Parliament, an engineering Parliament, to take care of the detailed legislation concerned with economics and away from the broad policy discussions of the House of Commons. These were novel trends, novelties which we could not in their time comprehend.
Perhaps the best Committee we had during those years was the Select Committee on National Expenditure, which through the Vote Office submitted fortnightly reports to us on industries and policies being followed. I always rather regretted the breaking up of that Select Committee. I thought that its form during the war had much to commend it for transformation in peace to meet our needs now.
Above all, I join with the Leader of the House who showed no favour to the formation of specialised committees but did what he could to prevent them as they are indicated—only indicated—in the Report. I heartily agree with him that we might get better control over Question hour. Do not let us be misled by this merely in terms of numbers. I was present on 2nd March, 1939—this is cited by the Select Committee—when the then Minister of Labour, Mr. Ernest Brown, got through 100 Questions. He achieved that only with the immense co-operation of the House, particularly towards the end of the Question hour. A quick gallop through Questions of a perfunctory nature is not really Question hour. Questions should be buoyant, cogent, and to the point. Sometimes when within the space of an hour 20 or 30 Questions are called which contain much buoyancy and point counter point, it is like a good rally at tennis. That is the sort of Question hour we want. If we merely and perfunctorily discharge the question by saying that we achieve 60 or 70 Questions a day by just galloping through them with perhaps a

rather dull House of Commons, that is not the sort of Question hour I should like to see in future.

9.3 p.m.

Mr. W. A. Wilkins: I understand that I have only two or three minutes in which to make a few observations. I was rather dismayed to hear at the very beginning of the debate an appeal by Mr. Speaker to hon. Members to keep their speeches short because he understood there were a large number of hon. Members who wanted to speak. I have always felt that this ought to be a debating chamber and not a place to which hon. Members come with speeches prepared perhaps a week or so in advance. My view is that we should try to answer the points raised in the debate, and that is what I want to do for just a moment or two.
The observations that I want to make were inspired by the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Fife, West (Mr. William Hamilton), who endeavoured to warn the House that on many of the matters that come before us we are, to use his word, "diddled" by the Executive, and that if we had specialised committees they would be "diddled" by the Executive and have the wool pulled over their eyes. My hon. Friend also warned us that this happened to us in this Chamber as well.
I suggest that the House has even been "diddled" over this debate. The Committee on Procedure was asked to investigate the conduct of business mainly because of a Motion that I tabled before the Summer Recess, which called for a reconsideration of the hours at which this Chamber functions. The matter came before the Committee which, by devious means, found all the reasons in the world why it should not advise the House on any change of hours, at least for the time being.

Mr. A. J. Irvine: My hon. Friend's reference to "devious means" puzzles me. Without regard for anything other than the interests of the House, the Committee felt it important to decide, before turning to the issue of the times of sittings, how the business of the House ought to be distributed. For example, the whole question of specialised committees and how that should be determined had an obvious bearing on the times of sittings.

Mr. Wilkins: That is what I meant by "devious means". I thought that my hon. and learned Friend would understand what I had in mind. But this is the point. The Select Committee on Procedure spent a long time discussing how to deal with certain aspects of business, including the creation of specialised committees, instead of dealing with what I submit is the principal question which we wished it to consider—the time and length of sittings.
I believe that if, as a House of Commons, we had made a decision that we would no longer tolerate this utterly foolish business of sitting through the early hours of the morning and had said that we would carry out our business between 10.30 a.m. and 7.30 p.m., perhaps with extensions for major debates until 10 p.m.—that would still have given hon. Members a reasonable period for rest—the House would have found a way to accommodate all the business it is required to do. We have put the cart before the horse.
It seems to me that all the reasons in the world have been sought or suggested as to why we cannot change the hours of the House. I know that this proposal for alteration was inspired on this occasion by some of the newer hon. Members, but you, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, and I know that the matter has been raised in the House on at least three occasions during the past 20 years. Yet we still have not come to a decision about it. Nor shall we reach a decision as long as there are interests which are concerned to be away from this House in the mornings.
I appeal to my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House and to all hon. Members to make the first decision—the one which requires that there shall be a change in the sitting time of the House. I am certain that it is not beyond the wit of my right hon. Friend, or of hon. Members, then to decide the way in which business should be conducted.
I share the apprehension of most hon. Members who have spoken today on the subject of specialised committees. I have some reservations and strong doubts about sending Bills to a Committee for Second Reading. I rather doubt whether the hon. Members who had not taken part in the discussion of the Second Reading of a Bill would be prepared to accept the

recommendation when it came back to the House.
I hope that when we come to make our decisions on these matters we will put first things first and decide that we shall come to the House in what I call civilised hours and have adequate opportunities for the necessary rest which everyone protests that we need and that we will find ways of accommodating the business of the House within a reasonable time.

9.11 p.m.

Mr. Edward Gardner: The purpose of the debate and of the Reports which are the subject of the debate is to discover the best way of improving the effectiveness and the efficiency of the House. Although I join with other right hon. and hon. Members in congratulating the Committee on its Reports, I regret the absence from the Reports of any repetition of the unanimous recommendation which was contained in paragraph 27 of the Report of the Select Committee on Procedure in 1959, a unanimous recommendation that, at the discretion of the Chair, during major debates there should be set aside one hour for short speeches and that those speeches should be limited to five minutes. I do not know whether the period of five minutes necessarily would commend itself to the House, but I hope that this unanimous recommendation from 1959 will still provoke the House to action upon it.
One of the best ways in which we can improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the House is to recognise the importance of time and the virtue of brevity in debate. It is silly to suppose that all speeches in this Chamber are brief. Some, by inordinate repetition—to be perfectly frank—are more wasteful of Parliamentary time than any other feature of our Parliamentary life. Time is valuable in the House—we all know that. Time means government; times means opposition to government. It means the opportunity to circulate ideas upon which future legislation may flourish or fail. Time is the essence of Parliamentary debate. The brevity of a speech is almost always a better test of its value than its length.
Time, unhappily, is precious, so precious that, as Napoleon said, few of us have time to be brief. When George Bernard Shaw was apologising for writing


a long letter, he pleaded that he had no time to write a short one. Outside the House, in industry, time and motion studies are considered to be of great value in improving efficiency. It may be that if we had a time and speech study in the House we could come to some surprising conclusions. Though wit and profundity and originality may occasionally escape a speaker, brevity is always at his command. One of the simplest and most fundamental ways in which this House can improve its procedure and make the best of its present procedures is to see that it makes better use of its time in debate.
In December, 1963, a Motion which many Members may remember was put on the Order Paper. It was a Motion that this House would welcome the implementation of the unanimous recommendation of the Report from the Select Committee on Procedure, 1959, that an hour be set aside, at the discretion of the Chair, for brief speeches on the occasion of major debates. That Motion had the support of more than 100 Members from both sides of the House. I hope that those Members who supported that Motion, who are still in this House, and there are many of them, will remember their enthusiasm for it and will do all they can to persuade the Government to accept the recommendation, made I believe at the instigation of the hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Northampton (Mr. Paget).
The argument that to quell a speaker in the flood of his oratory is in some way offensive to principles of liberty of speech or democracy, or some obscure constitutional principle, is completely overwhelmed by the counter-argument that there is no greater offence to democracy than to keep a speaker silent when he has a point to make, because other speakers go on for an unconscionable length of time. I look at the clock and I see that I have just taken four and a half minutes. I think it perhaps is, without undue modesty, about time I sat down.

9.16 p.m.

Mr. R. T. Paget: I am grateful to the hon. and learned Member for Billericay (Mr. Gardner) for referring to a proposal which I made to an earlier Select Committee. I believe that inserted

in major debates, perhaps two-day debates, there should be a single hour for those who have just one short point to make and who otherwise, if they are called, feel they somehow owe it to themselves to pad it out to 15 minutes. It would be an improvement worth trying, and we could always experiment with it.
The first point I want to make is with regard to the Ten Minute Rule. The Ten Minute Rule is that which allows people to explain to the House and to the public the purpose of the proposal which they have in mind. It has nothing to do with getting a Bill through. Anybody can propose a Bill. He can put it on the Table and he can get it printed and he can then put it down for a Second Reading. There it stops unless he gets the support of the Government. He can do that whether he gets the leave of the House under the Ten Minute Rule or not.
The purpose of the Rule is to enable the Member to make his proposal public, and that purpose is totally defeated if it is put at the end of the proceedings. It becomes as useless as the Adjournment debate has become. One has missed the Press and there is an audience of one in the House. There is no short debate.
The position of back benchers has been whittled away steadily by the demands of Government. What is proposed here is simply to take away from back benchers the right to make views or facts public to the House and to the Press. This is a rare opportunity for us today, and it is one which, as back benchers, we would be insane to throw away. I certainly hope that the Government will not proceed with this, but if they do I hope that, on a free vote, it will be defeated.
My second point concerns specialist committees. I always have been strongly in favour of them. I entirely agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Michael Foot) that this House should have more time to debate grievances, but we can have more time only if something is cleared away. What the House cannot do, and has always failed to do, is to deal with the administration and expenditure of Departments.
In matters of administration we do the best we can at Question Time, but it is always very difficult to obtain information to work on. On the Floor of the House in debates upon the Votes of certain Departments we are never able to express full criticism of their administration. It is quite impossible. As for expenditure, the idea that the House controls it is a fiction. I spent several years in charge of Service Estimates from the Opposition point of view. The Estimates of Departments are in such a form as to give the very minimum of information. They afford no basis for detailed discussion. The only occasions on which there is anything to bite on is when the Estimates Committee has a go at a specific aspect of the Estimates. Then some information is obtained. Then it is possible to criticise by working on the information obtained. That is what we need, and that is what specialist committees should do.
There is one thing I want to say about security. When I was an Opposition speaker on Service matters I obtained a certain amount of information about which I had to be discreet, but the amount of genuine security matter which becomes available in this way is absurdly exaggerated. I remember saying to one Secretary of State for War—as the office then was—"Look here, suppose the Communists got you and gave you the truth drug so that you were helpless. What could you tell them that would be of any advantage to them? "I remember that his reply was, "Well, I can think of just one thing which might save them a little time, on a new bit of weapons research." That was the lot. Searching his mind the Minister could find nothing more. I believe that outside Service Departments there would be nothing at all, from the security aspect.
I cannot say that I have ever found myself embarrassed by the confidential or security information that I was given, from the point of view of criticising the way in which Departments were being conducted. I do not believe that a committee, even if given a certain amount of classified information, would find itself embarrassed to any extent. That applies only to the Service Departments.
I now turn to the procedure which would probably be adopted for these

committees. First, they should have the power to send for papers and persons, and those persons should include the Minister. The Minister should be cross-examined by those on the committee as to the Estimates which he is putting forward and the demands which he is making and his civil servants and other people who support these demands should go there and answer questions. That is the first job of the committee—to get the evidence. Its report is a subsidiary matter. The first job is to get the evidence and provide this House—which is, after all, responsible for these activities—with something which they have the opportunity to examine.
On the question of making a report, I agree that a Select Committee is effective only if it is unanimous and I find that the most curious thing is that when a Standing Committee is set up it knows that its function is to disagree: when a Select Committee is set up, it knows that its function is to agree. It is extraordinary how well a Select Committee works on that basis. On certain matters, of course, there is not unanimity and then all that a Committee can do is to say that on this matter some people take one view and others take another. On the points on which they agree, they can say that something can be done. This is an extremely valuable procedure and something which, at this time, we should vote for.

9.26 p.m.

Sir Kenneth Pickthorn: I am sorry to stand between the Leader of the House and his flock, or squadron. I have a good deal I want to say, and I always find that the longer I speak the more fluent I get: but tonight I propose to leave out practically everything and come to one point which I may, without egotism, regard as mine, because I was the chap who brawled and not quite threw half-bricks through windows, but at any rate tried to attract attention to the great constitutional question of whether or not votes causing the imposition of new taxation ought to be plainly seen to have a majority in the House of Commons.
I think that the question so posed, and I think that is a fair way of posing it, pretty nearly answers itself. But the House was not very interested, at least not so much as I thought it ought to have been. We have had several speeches


today reminding us that procedure in itself has no interest or importance, that one must never think about it without referring it to the constitutional arrangements one has or desires.
There can be no more historical or essential function of this House than answering the Executive when the Executive asks for Supply. On that occasion, I even went so far against my natural inclination and the ordinary decencies as to put down a Motion which it was held might be reflecting upon the Chair. And afterwards to amend that and then to remove it: I did that partly because that Committee had then been invited to advise, and I felt sure, and, indeed, I might have felt sure this evening, too, of attention, but I thought that if there were tine the House ought to be informed of the point before the winding up; I might even have felt sure this evening that the Leader of the House would give us some assurance now that this matter having been referred for advice to the Select Committee and being and having been now for three or four months an urgent matter, is a matter which no longer brooks any delay, whatever other duties it may now have.

9.30 p.m.

Mr. Bowden: May I, by leave of the House, reply to what has been an excellent debate. I think that the debate has clearly indicated to the House—and I say this with great respect to the new Members, many of whom come here with the idea that they have all the answers to all our problems and who believe that there can be a complete change in our procedure—that it is very difficult indeed to reach any form of agreement on these procedural matters. The debate has taken place across party; it has included some members of the Select Committee, some supporters of the recommendations and others who have not supported all the recommendations. But the debate has shown that on these procedural matters it is very difficult to reach agreement.
In my view, this is as it should be; it is part of the value of the history of this country, not only in the procedure of the House but in our constitution, too. There is nothing formal, nothing set about it: like Topsy it just "grow'd", and I think that that is probably the right way.
May I first deal with one or two general points which have been made, including some which have been made by the right hon. Member for Rushcliffe (Sir M. Redmayne). I agree with him—and I said this in my speech—that to some extent we have frustrated the work of the Select Committee on Procedure by asking them to look at priority matters. He has suggested that perhaps there might be two Committees. This means one more Committee and it is a difficulty. But I am prepared to look at the matter, because there is no doubt of the problem.
The hon. Member for Carlton (Sir K. Pickthorn) raised a point, which ought to be considered, concerning the casting vote. The question of proxy voting ought to be looked at, as well as a number of other things. They are priority matters. On the other hand, we should permit the Committee to go ahead and have a general look at the whole field of procedure. I am prepared to look at the right hon. Gentleman's suggestion and to see which way it can be done in the next Session, without preventing the Select Committee on Procedure from getting on with their job.
The right hon. Gentleman also appealed to me to persuade Ministers to be brief in answering questions. I will do my best. As I said earlier, our research shows that it is not in the first Answer that the difficulty arises; it is in the supplementary answer of the Minister to a supplementary question, with probably another supplementary question following it, that we get into difficulties. But I will do my best to persuade Ministers to be briefer. He asked me about the cost of Questions and whether the House could have some information about it. I understand that there is a Question on the Order Paper about the cost of Questions, and this information will be available to all hon. Members in reply to this Question within a few days.
The hon. and learned Member for Billericay (Mr. Gardner) spoke about short speeches and the proposal for one hour of five minute speeches which was a unanimous proposal of the 1959 Committee. I remember this very well, and he will remember that it was referred to as the Parliamentary Children's Hour and was more or less laughed out of court by the Press and everyone else. I see no reason why we should not experiment,


however. I am not sure what it would require. I do not think that it would require any change in Standing Orders but it could become a practice of the House. We might discuss this with our new Speaker in due course.
May I come to the more detailed points? First, I was asked about the Second Reading Committees. The right hon. and learned Member for Chertsey (Sir L. Heald) was worried in case there would be inadequate publicity of a Bill dealt with in such a Committee. I do not think that this would be the case, because the Second Reading Committee would be covered in the same way by reporters and by the Press generally, and I do not think there would be any danger of inadequate publicity. It is important to realise that these would not be Bills which were highly contentious and likely to reach the headlines. They would, perhaps, be more in the way of amendments or Bills which came from the Law Commissioners, and perhaps dealing with lawyers' law, if I may so term it. The Bills would not perhaps be those which attracted the headlines but they would be extremely valuable and of the type which ought to be on the Statute Book. I do not fear the danger which the right hon. Gentleman envisaged.
The right hon. Member for Rushcliffe again made a point which he made to the Select Committee—I have read his evidence—that some Members might be excluded from Second Reading Committees. He gave the answer himself. He knows as well as I do that there are seldom occasions on which more than 40 Members on either side of the House want to speak on Second Reading. I do not think that pitching it at a figure of 80 as a maximum would mean that anyone would be likely to be excluded. Of course, we could have a look at it. As an experiment for one year, my guess is that we will not need anything like 80 for a Second Reading, but after that year we could try again if there are difficulties. In any case, hon. Members would make their representations through their own Whips, which they often do, or direct to the Committee of Selection.
It has also been suggested that this procedure would help only the Government and would not help back benchers. I do

not accept that. I believe that back benchers as well as Government and official Opposition Front Benches would be equally interested in the sort of Bill, law reform and so on, which would come under this procedure.
A great deal has been said about Ten Minute Rule Bills. We have been reminded that under Standing Order No. 37 a Bill can be presented to the House without debate. My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Northampton (Mr. Paget) made it absolutely clear that the purpose of a Ten Minute Rule Bill is to state the reason for wishing to bring in such a Bill. This can be done as equally well after 10 p.m. as it can at 3.30 p.m. and I do not agree with one of my hon. Friend's who said that there will be a loss to private Members. There will be nothing of the sort. Hon. Members will not be losing anything but will merely be taking such matters later in the day. [Interruption.] If something is lost because the matter is taken later in the day there would seem to be not very much enthusiasm for the matter which it was desirous to raise at 3.30 p.m. As I say, I do not believe that there will be any loss but that this is an experiment which is worth trying.
Several points were made about the Finance Bill in connection with the Third Report. The right hon. Member for Rushcliffe made the rather novel suggestion of a joint Second Reading of a Bill, which could be treated after that as two Bills, one dealing with tax administration and one with budgetary matters. On this suggestion, we return to the problem of who will divide the Finance Bill into its two parts. Is it to be Parliamentary Counsel? They would find it an extremely difficult thing to do. I was asked this question when I gave evidence, and I felt that the only possible way by which this could be done would be for a Select Committee of the House to look at the Bill and try to divide it, but that would probably lead to greater controversy than anything else.
The Select Committee of the House would report to the House that it had proposed to divide the Finance Bill in a certain way and that certain Clauses should be taken on the Floor of the House and others in Committee upstairs. That Report would be debatable and


such a debate could quite easily go on for a whole day, related to particular Clauses of the Finance Bill, and any hope of saving time that way would have gone. Anything involving the House having to make a decision after certain proposals have been made—and it is right that the House should make decisions—would mean the House debating the matter and, as I say, a great deal of time which it was hoped to save would have been lost.
Another point arises. Assuming that this were done and that the Bill was divided in this way, with parts of it going upstairs, would there not be a tendency for those parts which come down to be likely to need a longer time on Report? Is there not such a tendency with a Bill like a Finance Bill?
The hon. Member for Roxburgh, Selkirk and Peebles (Mr. David Steel) spoke about Purchase Tax on ice cream and suggested that that was the sort of thing which could go upstairs for discussion. It must be remembered, however, that that is direct taxation. Is it suggested that direct taxation should be considered in Committee upstairs? I am sure that that is not the view of the House. It is one thing to look at these matters superficially, but we must get down to the details involved. I am sure that hon. Members will appreciate that while, on the face of it, this suggestion might seem an easy thing to do, it is not.
I remember the late Hugh Gaitskell and I discussing this matter at length. He was of the opinion that one could, every two or three years, have a special Bill to deal with tax administration and take it outside the Finance Bill. In theory that sounds all right, but any one who has had experience of Government will know precisely what would happen. One would ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, "Is this really essential this year"? The Leader of the House or whoever was responsible for other legislation would feel that the other legislation should take precedence, with the result that the tax administration would not occupy a special Bill.
Another point is that very often tax administration is tied up with certain taxation proposals in that particular Finance Bill. So these are extremely

difficult things to decide, and it is for that reason that the Government have recommended that, whilst we should continue looking at it, we should continue to leave it where it is at the moment.
I come now to the Fourth Report, which has proved to be the most controversial. We have here the question of an extension of the Estimates Committee with new terms of reference. One thing evident from the speeches made today is that even members of the Select Committee themselves disagree about what exactly should be done in this form of extended Estimates Committee. There are those who feel that this is a slight extension of the terms of reference which will enable them to do their work more efficiently, some who feel that there should be an opportunity of policy discussions, while one or two Members—true, outside the Select Committee on Procedure—have expressed other views.
We have just now heard that one hon. Member feels that Ministers should be called to these new proposed Select Committees to be questioned on policy. We are getting very far from a scrutiny of finance and control of finance when we are in that field. This is the real danger of this proposal. In my view it is not clear from the Select Committee's Report, or clear in the view of many other hon. Members who have read it, that what is required is a simple extension of the powers of the Estimates Committee. There is the fear that we are bound very easily to get into the field of policy, which ought to be debated on the Floor of the House.
In paragraph 5 of the Report we are assured that the Committee sought to avoid drawing attention away from the House, but it might do just that. In paragraph 8 we are told that it is not wished that the Select Committee should get involved in party politics, but how can we avoid it once we get into the realms of policy? In paragraph 9 we are told that the Committee agrees that it is not easy to differentiate between pure policy questions and other questions, so we are back again to square one and the difficulty of decision in this field. Paragraph 13 tells us that the members of the Select Committee have not continued their discussion far enough to tell us procedurally how we would


operate the new proposed development of the Estimates Committee if, in fact, the House agreed to do this. I said earlier that we have not by any means got a closed mind on this matter. We would not agree, at the moment, anyhow, as our present thinking is, to an extension of the Estimates Committee in such a way that policy discussions on specific matters would be taken from the Floor of the House into small Committees.
Reference has been made to the work of the Select Committee on Nationalised Industries, and comparisons have been made. If hon. Members have read the Report, and I am sure they have, they will know that in the Fourth Report of the Select Committee on Procedure there is an example of the Nationalised Industries Committee discussing the relative value of methane gas and the Lurgi production method. This is pure policy. This can be done in the Select Committee on the Nationalised Industries—a nationalised industry is a public body which is trading, but it is not in any way comparable with a Government Department.
If one uses that sort of analogy, and I have been trying to think of one, is it argued that the proposed Select Committee could look at the relative values of, shall we say, one rifle as against another, and argue that in Committee? Is this the sort of thing that is wanted? Many members of the Select Committee on Procedure would say that they had no intention of doing anything of that sort but, on the other hand, many have argued in that direction. So here, again, until such time as the position is made very much clearer I think that we had better stay with the terms of reference as they are.
It is suggested that there should be one year of experiment in which, if the Estimates Committee so wishes, it can subdivide itself in a very different way, as the Chairman of the Estimates Committee suggested, and, rather than alphabetically looking at specific subjects and items of expenditure, examining spheres of Government Department activity. Let us see how that goes and perhaps have a look at it again, because it is proposed only as a Sessional change, to see if anything is necessary in the way of alteration.
My hon. Friend the Member for Nelson and Colne (Mr. Sydney Silverman), who was kind enough to tell me that it was not possible for him to be here for the winding-up of the debate, was worried that back benchers have very little influence in the Chamber and are losing what little they have. That is said very often, I know, and it is easily said. I hope that, within a few days, my hon. Friend will be getting the Royal Assent to a very important Private Member's Bill. He was helped in the sense, firstly, that the Government provided some time and, secondly, that the House agreed that he should have additional time with morning sittings. He was helped in those respects, but it was a private Member's activity. If that is not regarded as a fair example, he quoted the further one when he introduced a similar Bill some years ago.
He told us that in his view young people who ought to be thinking in terms of a Parliamentary career are prevented from coming here and frustrated because they feel that, once they got here, they would have no influence whatever over the executive. That is the sort of thing that people say, but is it true? If I decided tonight not to contest the next General Election—and I hasten to add that I have no such intention, all being well—I am quite sure that at the subsequent selection conferences in my constituency there would be very many able young men anxious to come here to fill the vacancy, and they would probably do so much better than I. Every Member knows that that is the position. Young people are not prevented from coming here because they are frustrated.
The degree of knowledge outside the House about our procedures is abysmally low. I read an article in a newspaper by a man who criticised our procedures and criticised hon. Members sitting here on our red benches. He had obviously not even seen the Chamber.
I reiterate what I said before. We propose no action whatever on Early Day Motions or on tabling not more than two Parliamentary Questions per day, other than to ask the appropriate Committees to look at them. In one case it will be the House of Commons Services Committee, which it is hoped to set up next week. Every hon. Member who has been in the House for any length of time—and, compared with some, my 20 years


is a relatively short time—knows very well that procedural changes are taking place every year. They may not be regarded as major but, if one looks back over the years, they are considerable. Many new Members may feel that they are not radical enough or quick enough, but I doubt very much whether they would agree amongst themselves on any proposals for changes, any more than the rest of us would. That is one of the problems and, as I said earlier, it is right.
Parliament is not here for its Members, or for the Government or for the Opposition. It is here for the government of the country. It is because of that that the division of our time, about which there has been so much criticism, goes on as it is. It is a difficult equation to work out. There is time for the Opposition, time for legislation, time for back benchers, time for debating grievances before voting money, and time for private Members' legislation. All these things are worked out fairly equitably, and I am not speaking in a party sense now. It is quite wrong to say that back benchers are losing opportunities or are getting less time in the House now than they were 20 years ago when I first came here. It is perfectly true, and the point has been made that for the first five years of the Labour Government, from 1945 to 1950, there was no Private Members' Time other than the half-hour Adjournment, but since that time Private Members' Time has been restored. Very largely as a result of the activities of Mr. Aneurin Bevan, four additional half-days for discussion were agreed upon. There is more time available now for Private Members' Bills and Motions than at any time in the last 20 years. It is a fine balance, but I think it is about right.
I am sure this debate has been of value, and I propose to sit down now for this reason. We are all procedural experts, and I understand that hon. Members want to divide on some of these Motions. I want to give them the opportunity to do so. If the Motions go down, so be it. This is a House of Commons matter, but if I continued the discussion until 10 o'clock there would be no opportunity for hon. Members to declare which way they want to vote. For that reason, I shall sit down so that they may express their decisions.

Mr. Iremonger: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Could you guide the House on this point? The Leader of the House said that he is sitting down now so that hon. Members may divide the House if they want to do so and there can be a Division on one or other of the Motions which are to be put. The point on which I should like to have guidance is this. Suppose the business were to continue and the debate were to be carried on until Ten o'clock, is it the case that a Division challenged when the Questions are put individually after Ten o'clock causes the whole business to be withdrawn?

Mr. Speaker: The simple answer is that if in those circumstances the business is opposed after Ten o'clock it will have to be deferred. It will have to be taken some other day. Mr. Iremonger.

Mr. Iremonger: rose—

Mr. Abse: rose—

Mr. Speaker: I called Mr. Iremonger.

Mr. Iremonger: I thought the hon. Member for Pontypool (Mr. Abse) was rising to a further point of order.

Mr. Speaker: I thought the hon. Member for Ilford, North (Mr. Iremonger) was already on a point of order.

Mr. Abse: I wished to speak on that point of order. Further to that point of order. Am I to understand, since there is no exemption Motion on the Order Paper, that it would be open to any hon. Member to say Aye or No to any of the particular Motions before the House and be able to speak to the Motions and oppose them?

Mr. Speaker: It would not be in order. The Leader of the House made that perfectly clear. At Ten o'clock if any of the Motions on the Order Paper are opposed they will not be taken tonight, if opposed in any shape or form.

Mr. Iremonger: In view of the Ruling you have given, Mr. Speaker, I have risen and you have been good enough to call me and I hope I shall be able to make one or two statements to the House with the perfectly frank intention, which I believe will receive the approbation of a number of hon. Members on both sides of the House, that it should not be possible


for the Government to get this business because it is not desired—by me at any rate, nor I believe by hon. Members on both sides of the House—that the virtual abolition of the Ten Minute Rule procedure should be put through the House. [HON. MEMBERS: "Vote."] The general sense of hon. Members who have intervened from a sitting position seems to be that it would be perfectly in order to vote. [HON. MEMBERS: "A free vote."] I accept the point.
There is a further point which the House might well consider. I am not perfectly satisfied that the Leader of the House would not be prepared, if given time, to reconsider his decision that this procedure should be abolished. I feel that this is an appalling encroachment upon the already diminishing rights of hon. Members. I believe that there are hon. Members other than myself who have very greatly valued this procedure and who regard it as having a unique merit.

Mr. Paget: Let us vote on it.

Mr. Iremonger: The hon. and learned Gentleman knows full well that he and hon. Friends of his are sitting behind the Leader of the House for the purpose of voting on it to give the Leader of the House his way. [HON. MEMBERS: "No."]

Mr. Abse: May I assure the hon. Gentleman, as one who will definitely vote against the proposal in relation to the Ten Minute Rule, as will many of my hon. Friends, that it will be a free vote on this side of the House?

Mr. Iremonger: I am disposed to be fortified by the assurance that there are indeed hon. Members opposite who propose to vote in that way. I have heard individual Members who have spoken during the debate say that they oppose the recommendation of the Leader of the House, but there are many hon. Members who have entered the House since then whose view is not known. They will be disposed, as the House knows full well, to take the lead of the Leader of the House—[HON. MEMBERS: "No."] In the rather informal sense of the House that we have been able to take, it might be wise to allow this to proceed.

Mr. Speaker: Order. If that is the hon. Gentleman's opinion, he must be quick, otherwise we shall not be able to.

Mr. Iremonger: In that case, in order that we may divide on Order of the Day No. 4, I shall be glad to resume my seat.

Question put and agreed to.

Reports considered accordingly.

Resolved,
That this House, taking note of the Reports of the Select Committee on Procedure of 1964–65, approves the amendment to the Standing Orders of this House set out in the following Schedule.

SCHEDULE

Amendment to Standing Orders Standing Order No. 8

Paragraph 5, line 38, after "circumstances", insert:
(5) Notice of a Question shall not be given for oral answer on a day later than 21 days after the date of the notice.
In reckoning the period of 21 days, no account shall be taken of any period during which the House stands adjourned for more than two days.—[Mr. Bowden.]

PROCEDURE (PUBLIC BILLS)

Ordered,
That for the Session 1965–66 the following paragraphs shall have effect:—

(1) when any public bill has been printed, a Motion, of which not less than ten days' notice has been given, may be made by a Minister of the Crown at the commencement of public business, that the bill be referred to a Second Reading Committee, and the Question thereupon shall be put forthwith and decided without amendment or debate; and if, on the Question being put, not less that twenty Members rise in their places and signify their objection thereto, Mr. Speaker shall declare that the Noes have it.
(2) a Second Reading Committee shall be a Standing Committee consisting of not less that thirty nor more than eighty members, to be nominated by the Committee of Selection to serve on the Committee during the consideration of each bill referred to it; and in the nomination of such members the Committee of Selection shall have regard to their qualifications and to the composition of the House.
(3) a Second Reading Committee shall report to the House whether or not they recommend that such bills ought to be read a second time; and they shall have power to state their reasons for recommending that a bill ought not to be read a second time.
(4) the terms of a Second Reading Committee's report shall be stated on the Order Paper beneath the order for the second reading of the bill; and the Question for the second reading of such a bill shall be decided without amendment or debate.

PROCEDURE (MOTIONS FOR LEAVE TO BRING IN BILLS AND NOMINATION OF SELECT COMMITTEES AT COMMENCEMENT OF PUBLIC BUSINESS)

Motion made, and Question put,
That for the Session 1965–66 Standing Order No. 13 (Motions for leave to bring Bills and nomination of Select Committees at commencement of public business) shall have effect with the following modification, namely, that any such notice of motion, instead of being considered at the commencement of public business, shall stand over and may not be moved

until after a member of the Government shall have signified to the Chair his intention to move "That this House do now adjourn", for the purpose of bringing the sitting to a conclusion; whereupon Mr. Speaker shall immediately call upon the member who has given notice of the motion to move that motion, and if the proceedings thereon have not been concluded at Ten o'clock he shall not interrupt them at that hour; and the Motion for the adjournment of the House shall not be moved until after the conclusion of those proceedings.—[Mr. Bowden.]

The House divided: Ayes 128, Noes 118.

Division No. 270.]
AYES
[9.59 p.m.


Allen, Scholefield (Crewe)
Irving, Sydney (Dartford)
Pym, Francis


Bacon, Miss Alice
Jeger, George (Goole)
Ramsden, Rt. Hn. James


Bagier, Gordon A. T.
Johnson, Carol (Lewisham, S.)
Redmayne, Rt. Hn. Sir Martin


Baxter, William
Johnson, James (K' ston-on-Hull, W.)
Reynolds, G. W.


Binns, John
Jones, Dan (Burnley)
Rhodes, Geoffrey


Blenkinsop, Arthur
Jones, J. Idwal (Wrexham)
Roberts, Goronwy (Caernarvon)


Boardman, H.
Jones, T. W. (Merioneth)
Rodgers, William (Stockton)


Bowden, Rt. Hn. H. W. (Leics S. W.)
Kenyon, Clifford
Rogers, George (Kensington, N.)


Boyden, James
Kerby, Capt. Henry
Ross, Rt. Hn. William


Buchanan, Richard
Kirk, Peter
Sharples, Richard


Carter-Jones, Lewis
Lawson, George
Sheldon, Robert


Cary, Sir Robert
Leadbitter, Ted
Silkin, John (Deptford)


Chapman, Donald
Lever, L. M. (Ardwick)
Silkin, S. C. (Camberwell, Dulwich)


Chichester-Clark, R.
Lewis, Ron (Carlisle)
Sinclair, Sir George


Clark, William (Nottingham, S.)
Loughlin, Charles
Skeffington, Arthur


Craddock, George (Bradford, S.)
Mabon, Dr. J. Dickson
Slater, Joseph (Sedgefield)


Davies, Harold (Leek)
McBride, Neil
Smith, Dudley (Br'ntf'd &amp; Chiswick)


Davies, Ifor (Gower)
McCann, J.
Solomons, Henry


de Freitas, Sir Geoffrey
MacDermot, Niall
Stodart, Anthony


Diamond, Rt. Hn. John
Mackie, John (Enfield, E.)
Stones, William


Doig, Peter
Mahon, Peter (Preston, S.)
Strauss, Rt. Hn. G. R. (Vauxhall)


Edwards, Rt. Hn. Ness (Caerphilly)
Mahon, Simon (Bootle)
Swingler, Stephen


English, Michael
Mallalieu, E. L. (Brigg)
Symonds, J. B.


Fernyhough, E.
Mallalieu, J. P. W. (Huddersfield, E.)
Thomas, George (Cardiff, W.)


Fitch, Alan (Wigan)
Mapp, Charles
Thomson, George (Dundee, E.)


Fletcher, Sir Eric (Islington, E.)
Mason, Roy
Thornton, Ernest


Fletcher, Raymond (Ilkeston)
Mellish, Robert
Turton, Rt. Hn. R. H.


Fraser, Rt. Hn. Tom (Hamilton)
Millan, Bruce
Wainwright, Edwin


Galpern, Sir Myer
Mills, Peter (Torrington)
Wallace, George


Garrett, W. E.
Monro, Hector
Wells, William (Walsall, N.)


Garrow, A.
Monslow, Walter
Whitelaw, William


Gourlay, Harry
Morris, John (Aberavon)
Whitlock, William


Grey, Charles
Munro-Lucas-Tooth, Sir Hugh
Willey, Rt. Hn. Frederick


Griffiths, David (Rother Valley)
Neal, Harold
Williams, Clifford (Abertillery)


Griffiths, Rt. Hn. James (Llanelly)
Noel-Baker, Francis (Swindon
Williams, W. T. (Warrington)


Hannan, William
Nugent, Rt. Hn. Sir Richard
Willis, George (Edinburgh, E.)


Harper, Joseph
Oakes, Gordon
Wills, Sir Gerald (Bridgwater)


Harrison, Walter (Wakefield)
Ogden, Eric
Wilson, William (Coventry, S.)


Hart, Mrs. Judith
O'Malley, Brian
Woodburn, Rt. Hn. A.


Howarth, Robert L. (Bolton, E.)
Peel, John
Yates, Victor (Ladywood)


Hughes, Cledwyn (Anglesey)
Pentland, Norman



Hughes, Hector (Aberdeen, N.)
Pitt, Dame Edith
TELLERS FOR THE AYES:


Hynd, H. (Accrington)
Popplewell, Ernest
Mrs Harriet Slater and Mr. Howie


Irvine, A. J. (Edge Hill)
Probert, Arthur





NOES


Abse, Leo
Buchan, Norman (Renfrewshire, W.)
Dell, Edmund


Allaun, Frank (Salford, E.)
Buxton, Ronald
Dempsey, James


Alldritt, Walter
Carlisle, Mark
Driberg, Tom


Armstrong, Ernest
Carmichael, Neil
Dunn, James A.


Atkinson, Norman
Clark, Henry (Antrim, N.)
Edwards, Robert (Bilston)


Barnett, Joel
Clarke, Brig. Terence (Portsmth, W.)
Ensor, David


Batsford, Brian
Coleman, Donald
Evans, Ioan (Birmingham, Yardley)


Beaney, Alan
Conlan, Bernard
Eyre, Reginald


Bence, Cyril
Crawshaw, Richard
Finch, Harold (Bedwellty)


Bennett, J. (Glasgow, Bridgeton)
Cullen, Mrs. Alice
Fletcher, Ted (Darlington)


Bessell, Peter
Dalkeith, Earl of
Floud, Bernard


Bishop, E. S.
Davies, S. O. (Merthyr)
Foot, Michael (Ebbw Vale)


Boston, Terence
Davies, Dr. Wyndham (Perry Barr)
Freeson, Reginald


Braddock, Mrs. E. M.
Deedes, Rt. Hn. W. F.
Gardner, Edward


Brown, Hugh D. (Glasgow, Provan)
Delargy, Hugh
Glover, Sir Douglas




Grant, Anthony
Mackenzie, Gregor (Rutherglen)
Small, William


Gregory, Arnold
Mackie, George Y. (C'ness &amp; S'land)
Spriggs, Leslie


Hale, Leslie
McLaren, Martin
Steel, David (Roxburgh)


Hamilton, James (Bothwell)
MacMillan, Malcolm
Swain, Thomas


Hamling, William (Woolwich, W.)
Manuel, Archie
Taverne, Dick


Hazell, Bert
Maxwell-Hyslop, R. J.
Taylor, Bernard (Mansfield)


Heffer, Eric S.
Mendelson, J. J.
Taylor, Edward M. (G' gow, Cathcart)


Hendry, Forbes
Miller, Dr. M. S.
Tinn, James


Higgins, Terence L.
Morris, Alfred (Wythenshawe)
Urwin, T. W.


Hill, J. E. B. (S. Norfolk)
Morris, Charles (Openshaw)
Walden, Brian (All Saints)


Hobden, Dennis (Brighton, K' town)
Newens, Stan
Walker, Harold (Doncaster)


Horner, John
Norwood, Christopher
Ward, Dame Irene


Howarth, Harry (Wellingborough)
Onslow, Cranley
Weatherill, Bernard


Howe, Geoffrey (Bebington)
Orme, Stanley
White, Mrs. Eirene


Hughes, Emrys (S. Ayrshire)
Oswald, Thomas
Wilkins, W. A.


Hunt, John (Bromley)
Page, John (Harrow, W.)
Williams, Mrs. Shirley (Hitchin)


Hunter, Adam (Dunfermline)
Page, Derek (King's Lynn)
Wilson, Geoffrey (Truro)


Iremonger, T. L.
Park, Trevor (Derbyshire, S. E.)
Woof, Robert


Jenkin, Patrick (Woodford)
Parker, John
Yates, William (The Wrekin)


Jenkins, Hugh (Putney)
Price, J. T. (Westhoughton)
Younger, Hn. George


Jopling, Michael
Rankin, John
Zilliacus, K.


Kerr, Mrs. Anne (R'ter &amp; Chatham)
Richard, Ivor



Lomas, Kenneth
Rose, Paul B.
TELLERS FOR THE NOES:


McGuire, Michael
Rowland, Christopher
Mr. R. T. Paget and


McInnes, James
Rowland, Christopher
Mr. William Hamilton.


Mackenzie, Alasdair (Ross &amp; Crom' ty)
Scott-Hopkins, James

PROCEDURE (SELECT COMMITTEES)

Resolved,
That this House approves the Second Report from the Select Committee on Procedure in Session 1963–64; that during the Session 1965–66 all Select Committees shall have power to authorise the Clerk of this House to supply

copies of their Reports to officers of Government Departments and to lobby journalists after those Reports have been laid upon the Table; that, when the Chairman of a Select Committee has been ordered to make a Report to this House, he shall not immediately lay the Report on the Table, but shall do so not more than two days before the publication of the Report.—[Mr. Bowden.]

HOME-GROWN CEREALS AUTHORITY (LEVY)

10.10 p.m.

Mr. James Scott-Hopkins: I beg to move,
That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, praying that the Home-Grown Cereals Authority (Rates of Levy) Order, 1965 (S.I., 1965, No. 1325), dated 25th June, 1965, a copy of which was laid before this House on 1st July, be annulled.

Mr. Speaker: Order, order. Will hon. Gentlemen leave the Chamber quietly? An hon. Member is trying to speak.

Mr. Scott-Hopkins: We now come to a very important part of the procedure of the House, dealing with a Prayer against a Statutory Instrument laid by the Government. The purpose of the Prayer is to find out from the Government what their intentions are in the Order.
This is the first of the Orders relating to the new Cereals Marketing Authority which was negotiated and the Bill in respect of which was compiled by my right hon. Friends when they formed the Government. So this is the first fruits of their labours. We now want to know from the Government various facts about how and why the levy has been fixed at the rate at which it has.
The first point one notices is the amount of money which it has been decided by the Government, on the advice received from the Cereals Authority, should be raised, which is £1,175,000. In one context this would seem a very large sum of money, but in another, as I shall try to show, it could be very insufficient. The first question which one must ask is whether the money is required purely for the purposes of Part I of the Cereals Marketing Act. We should like an assurance that there is no question of any of the levy being used for the trading powers which the Authority could have under Part II. The House will realise that the Minister has not been given powers by the House to use Part II, and so we want to be quite certain that no money is being put aside for that purpose.
Next, the Minister has presumably been satisfied that the amount of money raised is exactly right and necessary for the

purposes which the Authority has in mind. We should like to know how the mathematics have been divided between the three countries—Scotland, Northern Ireland, and England and Wales. How does the Minister see the money divided between them. We know how the money has been divided between wheat and barley, and now we want to know the division between the countries.
The main enabling legislation lays down that the Authority must put schemes to the Minister for the two products, wheat and barley, and schemes as to how it is to carry out its functions under the Act. This is laid down in Sections 2 and 3. We should like to have a look at the schemes. We should like to know what the schemes submitted to the Minister are, whether there will be an opportunity for the House to examine them, how the Authority intends to operate under its powers, and what it will do for this purpose. We must question the Ministry as to how the money is to be used. It is a great deal of money in one sense—over £1 million.
There are various purposes under Part I for which the money can be used—for instance, bonus payments and loans. An apportionment must have been made by the Authority to the Minister. How much is to be used for bonus payments? I have made some calculations. If a bonus of 10s. a ton is to be paid for a forward contract, then the whole of the levy sum will be taken up by 2 million tons of the crop, which is barely one-sixth of the total crop of the United Kingdom. If a little less than one-sixth of the crop is sold forward, thus attracting a bonus, the whole levy will be gone.
Is the Minister satisfied, therefore, that the sum involved is enough? What is to be the level of the bonus that the Authority intends to pay to cereal growers for forward contracts? What is the Authority's estimate of the quantity to be sold by forward contract? Again, how much is to be used for the granting of loans, particularly for loans to other persons on the recommendation of the Authority? This is an important point on which there was a great deal of discussion when the legislation was passing through this House. Presumably the Authority has made a forecast of what will be needed for this cereal year.
How much of the money is to be used for the other purposes permissible to the Authority, particularly its own credit facilities and the granting of credit facilities to other institutions which in turn will give credit to cereal growers? Equally important is the question of how much is to be used for research and development and for market information, which is of vital importance to both producers and the trade? In the light of all these purposes, we would like to be convinced that the money will be enough. On the other hand, we also want to know how much is to be spent on administrative purposes for payments to personnel, for travel expenses, etc.
There is a sub-division between wheat and barley and, within this context, a rather strange aspect concerns the acreages. Using the figures, produced in the June census, of the acreage planted for barley on which payment is to be based—5,195,000 acres at 2s. 2d. per acre—we arrive at a total payment of levy to the Authority of £562,791. That leaves a bigger sum to be raised through the levy on wheat—£612,210. It seems that less is expected to be raised from a larger acreage crop of barley than from wheat. Yet the strange thing about this is that if one converts the home-grown wheat levy to the same basis as that for barley, in other words, an acreage basis, taking the average yield at the fairly low minimum of 28 cwts. to the acre, the levy per acre on wheat is 3s. 7d., far in excess of that on barley.
Therefore, on the two counts, that much more money is to be raised from wheat and that it is to be raised at a much higher rate of levy, I am sure that the Parliamentary Secretary will agree that we are entitled to an explanation of this apparent disparity. I am sure that there must be a purpose behind this. Perhaps the Government are showing compassion for the farmer who grows barley and feeds it to his own stock and thereby attracts a lower rate of subsidy. Although the Parliamentary Secretary is smiling as I say that, this is a serious matter, as I am sure he will remember from our earlier discussions. I am sure that the House would like to feel assured that the Government have taken that matter into account and are fully satisfied that the levy on cereals for con-

sumption by livestock on the farm on which they are grown will not harshly and adversely affect the farmers concerned out of all proportion to the effect on other cereal growers.
It must be remembered that cereal growers who sell their crop to merchants or neighbours get the maximum benefit from the Cereals Authority. It is therefore right and proper that they should pay a levy for the benefits which they hope to receive. The farmer who feeds his wheat or barley to his own stock does not receive the same benefits as his neighbour who sells it. We must be certain that the Government have borne that factor in mind. It may be because of that that there is this glaring disparity between the two rates of 2s. 2d. a ton for barley and 3s. 7d. a ton for home-grown wheat.
I am sure the House will agree that, as long as the Authority is properly directed and the money properly used, the Authority's work will be of great benefit to cereal growers. However, we should not approve the scheme unless we have firm and clear guidance about how the money is being used and a firm assurance that it is being used for the right purposes and that it is properly divided among market research and development and pure research and bonus payments. I am certain that the House must also be satisfied that we have the right rate of bonus for forward contracts and that the Parliamentary Secretary is satisfied that he will not run out of money. Nothing could be worse than to have a supplementary levy introduced, as can happen under Schedule 3, at a later stage in the cereal year.
If the Parliamentary Secretary can answer those questions, then I am sure we can agree with this scheme, which is the concept of Conservative thought and administration in the last Government.

10.24 p.m.

Mr. Peter Kirk: My hon. Friend the Member for Cornwall, North (Mr. Scott-Hopkins) has outlined various questions to the Parliamentary Secretary, and very pertinent questions, too. This is the first levy to take place under the Cereals Marketing Act. Therefore, it is very important that we should get it right at this stage. Even though the hour is somewhat advanced, it is important that the Parliamentary Secretary should give us a very clear explanation


of the sort of things which my hon. Friend has brought before the House. I am particularly worried by the disparity, which my hon. Friend noticed, between wheat and barley. My hon. Friend was perhaps being a little on the mean side in his calculations, although neither of us is a mathematician by profession and we might have got it wrong.
My hon. Friend took an average figure of 28 cwts. per acre for wheat. As far as I can make out, the figure should be well over 30 cwts. an acre for wheat, which, of course, raises the figure considerably. I would like to know how this figure of £1,175,000 is arrived at. What average is the Parliamentary Secretary hoping to strike between barley and wheat in order to reach it? I can see that one has to calculate on a different basis because the deficiency payment is made on a different basis in that one can only make one's levy on an acreage basis in one case and on a crop basis to the buyer on another. But if one calculates on the same basis and takes 1·7d. per cwt. for wheat and accepts an average figure of about 28 cwts. per acre for barley, one comes to a figure less than a penny a cwt. on barley, which is a very considerable drop on the wheat figures.
If one takes the calculation the other way round and takes 2s. 2d. an acre on barley and the figure which I think is the latest figure, the 1963 figure, of 31 cwts. an acre for wheat, which is less than the 1962 figure, which is the figure that we should work on, one comes not to 3s. 7d. but 3s. 10d. That is the acreage figure for wheat, which is 1s. 8d. an acre higher than the figure for barley. This is a considerable disparity, even allowing for the deficiency payment on wheat being higher than the deficiency payment on barley. The target price is that much higher and I think we must have an explanation for this. Is this a concealed subsidy? I would not object if it was, but I think we should know whether or not it is. At this stage we should have some indication from the Government whether it is their intention to add to the barley deficiency payment through these means or through some other means.
My hon. Friend raised the question as to what this money is to be spent on, and I think this is of vital importance. If one considers the two functions of the

Authority, the first is purely administrative, and this is far too much money for this purpose. If one takes the second function, the helping function, it is far too little. We must get some idea as to what the Government's intentions are. Are they trying to build up a bank account against a bad year in the future? I would not blame them if they were, but I think we should know what they are planning.
I personally have no objection in principle to this Order. I think the House will be well advised to accept it, but I think before they do so it must be fairly clearly indicated by the Parliamentary Secretary how these figures are arrived at and on what it is proposed to spend the money. If we have these indications, then I for one will be quite happy to let the Order go through.

10.29 p.m.

Mr. Peter Mills: It is important, when considering this Home-Grown Cereals Authority (Rates of Levy) Order 1965, to ask the simple and pertinent question, what is the farmer really getting in return for this levy of 2s. 2d. an acre for barley and 1·7d. per cwt. for wheat? What I want to know from the Minister is how many will benefit through making a form of contract? Has he any figures to tell us? I do not think there will be very many. How many will really be tempted by this 10s. per ton? I do not think very many so far. I know very well that everyone who grows barley and wheat will sell it and will have to pay this levy. It does not strike me that the Ministry is paying out very much, certainly on forward contracts. I think it is most important to know where the rest of the money is going.
I have not heard of many forward contracts being made. I know, of course, that there are other benefits, but I have not heard of many forward contracts. I hope that the Parliamentary Secretary will check this and give me an answer, but my figures up to 27th September this year show that only 80 forward wheat contracts were made—a mere 7,000 tons—and only 188 barley contracts—a mere 74,000 tons—through registered contracts. This is a mere fleabite, when one considers that merchants normally handle from the farmers between 7 and 8 million tons of grain. In the West Country,


because of farmers having to pay these levies, very few people will get any benefit from these forward contracts, because they are not made.
I agree that this is a very difficult year to start the scheme. There are all sorts of problems and difficulties, but we ought to look into the main reasons why the scheme is fairly slow in starting. Normally, if farmers pay a levy, they want to get something from it. This is natural. But what are these reasons? There is still the very deep suspicion between grower and merchant, perhaps even greater this year than most years. Then there is the very strong feeling that prices will rise far more than the levy and far more than the 10s. bonus which the farmer can expect from the forward contract.
This is not surprising when one considers what the farmer had to pay for his grain last year—those who paid—and that the farmer who sold received quite a fair price for his grain and is therefore not prepared to enter into these forward contracts unless he thinks and hopes that he will get a better price.
Thirdly, the quality this year is affecting the whole process of making a contract between grower and merchant. There is a very real reluctance to make these contracts—a reluctance to sell. Barley farmers think, too, that the quality this year will be down and therefore they want to hold on to all the barley they have, and make no contract, no forward contract, and do not even want to sell at all.
All this makes it very difficult, in spite of the levy and the 10s., bonus for farmers, to make forwards contracts. What can the Minister do about this, because we all want this scheme to work? He should give more publicity to the scheme and its advantages. He should warn of the dangers of holding on to the grain too long without making a forward contract, and I hope that he will seek energetically to break down this suspicion between grower and merchant.
I hope that he will also look at the possibility—this might be a hot cake, but it should be investigated—of open price contracts. I believe that it is important to look at all these factors and to help where necessary. Charge

the levy, yes, but it is necessary to get the other side of the scheme working as well.

10.34 p.m.

Mr. Michael Jopling: Following on what was said by my hon. Friend the Member for Torrington (Mr. Peter Mills), about whether it was really so much of a surprise that few forward contracts had been made this cereals year, I believe that this is inevitable for the first year of a scheme of this sort. Farmers and merchants are notoriously slow in taking up new schemes of this sort. There might be a trickle this year, rather more next year, and possibly a flood in two years' time. I hope this will be so.
I wish to make only one point, which is to enlarge on what my hon. Friend the Member for Cornwall, North (Mr. Scott-Hopkins) said about something which has caused more irritation over this scheme than anything else. This is the fact that all growers, whether they sell their grain or feed it themselves, have to pay the same flat contribution by way of this levy. This has been discussed before in Committee. I spoke on this point in Committee, and my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, West (Mr. Stodart) was very vehement on this point. We then agreed that it was desirable that those growers who sold their grain should have to bear a rather larger burden of levy than those who fed their own grain. I took arms with my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, West about this. Having ruminated on it—if that is the right word—for a little time, I am not sure that we could not have tried to find a way round this problem. We agreed in Committee that it is not fair on those producers who feed all their grain that they should have to pay the same rate of levy as those who sell it.
We should not run away with the idea that those who feed all their grain get no advantage at all out of the scheme. I am one who feeds all his own barley. These people have certain advantages out of the scheme which we must not overlook. Very few farmers who grow grain have an exact balance between consuming it all on their own farms and selling it. Virtually all farmers have to buy, on balance, or to sell, on balance. Virtually none


has an exact balance between selling and home consumption. The vast majority of the fanners who feed all their own grain also have to go into the market to buy, which means that the market intelligence which the Cereals Authority provides is of great use to them.
There is a second great advantage for those who feed all their grain; the whole purpose of the scheme is to jack up the market price, and experience has shown that if more can be obtained out of the market, there is less chance in future that the guaranteed price will be reduced at a Price Review. We are all aware of occasions—this year was one and so was the previous year—on which we have suspected that the guaranteed price for grain was reduced because the Government were frightened of the subsidy bill which would arise. Those farmers who feed their own grain still draw acreage payments on barley, and it is very much in their interests to keep the market price as high as possible. But those who feed their own grain derive no advantage at all from the activities of the Authority in making forward contracts and in advancing loans.
Very few hon. Members would feel it strictly fair for all growers of barley, in particular, to have the same uniform rate of levy. Very few hon. Members would feel it wrong, if it were possible, to introduce a two-tier system of levy so that those who sold all their own grain paid at the top rate and those who consumed all their own grain at home paid a reduced rate of levy. Most hon. Members would agree that this was fair and equitable. But the problem of enforcing this would be extremely expensive and would probably cost more than it would yield.
Nevertheless, I ask the Minister to tell us in his reply that he will look into the problem. I am sure that the Ministry are aware of the inequity which arises under the scheme. I ask him to instigate an inquiry and to see whether a way can be found to introduce a two-tier system, which I believe would remove much of the irritation which this scheme has caused.
There is a way by which it might have been done. Perhaps if the barley levy were put on a tonnage basis—that is, merely the levy and not the subsidy—it would be possible to collect it only from those growers who sell grain through the

registered merchants. That would be one way to achieve this aim because all sales are now registered through merchants. I hope that the Minister and the House will see the equity of such a course and that the Government will try to find a way of introducing a two-tier system.

10.41 p.m.

Mr. George Y. Mackie: I have listened to the repetitive small points and calculations which have been adduced by hon. Members of the Conservative Party, and I appreciate and agree that the matter had been placed on the stocks by them and was later brought in by the Labour Government. I have always been doubtful about the value of this provision, and I was interested to hear the hon. Member for Cornwall, North (Mr. Scott-Hopkins) say that he wanted to be sure that no part of the money which we are discussing would ever be used in connection with the only really useful purpose of the Home-Grown Cereals Authority—the placing of a bottom price on the market—by entering the sphere of trading.
I, too, would like further information about the matter, and since the Authority has been in existence since July this year and has been operating with some extremely able men within the organisation, does the Minister consider that any good has been achieved? Has the Authority done any good during this harvest? Or does the Minister consider that the price of barley, it having risen, is entirely due to the weather, which is what I believe?
Since we are taking over £1 million from the farmers in the form of the levy, I agree with the hon. Member for Torrington (Mr. Peter Mills) that there should be more market intelligence and encouragement given to farmers to place forward contracts. We appreciate that able men are on the Authority, so the sooner they have permission to put a bottom price on the market in a bad year, the sooner the farmers are likely to reconcile themselves to the Government taking more than £1 million from them by the levy, whether it is done on the 2s. 2d. or 3s. 1d. per acre basis. However the calculations are done, it means that this £1 million is being taken from them for a service which, frankly, I do not believe will stand up to a really good and big harvest and good weather. It will not keep up the price unless we


have the power to intervene in the market in connection with the purchase of grain and so on. If that were done, the taking of £1 million from the farmers would be useful.

10.43 p.m.

The Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Mr. John Mackie): The hon. Member for Cornwall, North (Mr. Scott-Hopkins) clearly said that the Opposition had tabled the Prayer to find out our intentions about the Order, which we laid on 1st July. I will do my best to answer all the questions, although some of them may not have been pertinent to the precise matter under discussion. However, since you have shown leniency in this matter, Mr. Deputy Speaker, I hope that your leniency will continue so that I might endeavour to satisfy all hon. Members.
As the hon. Member for Cornwall, North is well aware, the Order lays down the rate of levy on growers of wheat and barley which is required for the cereal year 1965–66 to finance the operations of the Home-Grown Cereals Authority. The Authority got off the ground, so to speak, only a short while ago, on 3rd June last, and its members have been engaged in the task of obtaining staff and so on. As the hon. Member for Cornwall, North pointed out, some extremely able men are on the Authority. They have had to prepare estimates and that work must be based on knowledge of the industry and past events. To a tremendous extent, they must be left to make these estimates. Hon. Members may be critical of them, but we must consider the short time the Authority has been established.
Then there is the question of the actual use to which this money will be put. As I have said, the Authority is only starting, and it decided that this year it would concentrate on forward contracts, and bonus payments on them. Anyone who has any knowledge of the barley market, and the grain market generally, will agree that one of the greatest faults in the past has been that the farmers would not try to have level selling of their barley during the year, and anything that entices them into doing that is good. Whether this particular bonus on contracts will do that remains to be seen but, as the

hon. Member for Cornwall, North said, this is partly their idea, and everyone in Committee agreed that one of the main things was to try to get level selling of barley, which is the idea behind the forward-contract bonus. The bonus is to be 10s. a ton for wheat and barley.
Therefore, the next thing was to estimate how much of each of those cereals would be contracted. In its wisdom, the Authority decided that there might be one million tons of each. The hon. Member for Torrington (Mr. Peter Mills) was slightly scathing about the numbers. He produced some figures, though I am not quite sure where they came from. I should like to keep him up to date, and I have taken the opportunity to get the figures up to 5 o'clock this evening, which I think hon. Members will agree is as near as I could go.

Mr. Peter Mills: My figures were up to 27th September.

Mr. Mackie: I can assure the hon. Member that a lot has happened since then. The up-to-date figures show that the total number of contracts for barley is 4,122, with a total tonnage of 286,496. For wheat, the total number of contracts is 590, with a total tonnage of 46,504. These are fairly—

Mr. Anthony Stodart: This information is most interesting and is exactly what we wanted. Can the hon. Gentleman indicate how this is allocated over the country? Can he say whether growers in Scotland are as bitten with the idea as are those in the south of England, or whether or not we are further forward?

Mr. Mackie: I cannot give the hon. Gentleman right-up-to-date figures, but I can give them up to the 25th. The figure for England and Wales is 3,768 and 269,102 tons; for Scotland, 169 and 12,941 tons, and for Northern Ireland, 14 and 957 tons. That is the breakdown for the three countries.
Whether or not this is good or bad I do not think anyone can say at present, but as you will notice, Mr. Deputy Speaker, contracts for barley are very much more than those for wheat. There may be a reason for this. As most of us know, the price of wheat rises automatically right up to the end of the period


in June, and it may be that many farmers would prefer to contract in the later period, when wheat contracts may come up. But, as I have said, the Authority has decided to base its estimates on one million tons of each—

Mr. J. E. B. Hill: Before the hon. Gentleman leaves the subject of the number of contracts, can he say whether the numbers he has given include contracts with open arrangements, in which the price is not agreed and, therefore, contracts from which the vendor might be able to resile if he was not offered a satisfactory price, or are they all fixed contracts, with fixed prices, from which there will be no withdrawal?

Mr. Mackie: I have no actual figures to give the hon. Member. The information I have is that contracts are mostly on a fixed price basis, the majority for a December to January delivery period. I am sorry that I cannot give any information about whether there are open price contracts. I will try to find out, and I will let the hon. Member know.
That is the position about the total tonnage, and the reason is that there are about 5½ million acres of barley and 2½ million acres of wheat and, as hon. Members will know, the deficiency payment for wheat is on a tonnage basis, whereas that for barley is on an acreage basis, and in the estimates a higher figure had to be provided for wheat than for barley. Hon. Members have made various calculations based on the Authority's figures, but the 1·7d. per cwt. and the 2s. 2d. per acre depend entirely on the size of the crop. They had to make the estimate somehow, and the Authority, being the responsible body, has arrived at those figures. They are more or less round figures and, in the long run, they may turn out to be correct.
The hon. Member for Cornwall, North made the point that if the Authority has not estimated for sufficient money, there is nothing worse than coming back and taking a supplementary levy. That may have to be done, though we hope not, and, unless contracting comes very much quicker than anticipated, it looks as if the Authority will be on the right side. Naturally, we should prefer not to do it, but there is provision in the Act that it can be done. That deals with several points made by other hon. Members as well. I have dealt with the point about

the split up between the three countries, and I have dealt with the point about the supplementary levies.
As for the use of the money, bonuses will amount to £1 million or thereabouts, and of the rest £125,000 will be used, along with contributions from the taxpayer, for administration. The rest will be for the market information and statistical services. The Authority feels that the contracting and those two other functions of market information and statistical services are about as far as they can go in their first year of work. During the year, it will be giving consideration to possible future methods of implementing its responsibility as regards the guaranteeing of loans for next year, but that is not in its work for this year. I would assure the hon. Member for Cornwall, North, as I think he knows perfectly well, that the Authority cannot use any money for reserve trading powers. It has to come to the Minister and ask for such trading powers. However, it has not come to ask for those powers so far, and the House will be notified when it does.
The hon. Member for Saffron Walden (Mr. Kirk) also brought up the point about the disparity between wheat and barley and the calculations being on a different basis. I have explained why that is, and I have also explained that all the calculations are estimates. Again, I emphasise that a responsible body like the Authority can only use the knowledge that it has, and it may or may not have to ask for a supplementary cut from the deficiency payments.
The hon. Member for Torrington wondered what the farmers were getting for it. I do not want to go through all the detail now, because we went into it in tremendous detail in Committee, but the hon. Member for Cornwall, North answered most of the hon. Member for Torrington's questions in what he said to begin with, and everyone appreciates what the farmers will get out of it. I am sure that it will be of great benefit to them.
I have given figures to satisfy him on the amount of contracting that there is, with which the Authority is very satisfied.
The hon. Member for Westmorland (Mr. Jopling) asked for the figures again and put forward a point about the


Authority asking growers of wheat and barley to sell. All growers of wheat naturally sell because they want to get the deficiency payment, but many barley growers use a lot of barley for feed, though not all of it. A great deal of this was thrashed out in Committee on the Bill. Every one is a potential seller and the hon. Member answered his own question. The benefit to all growers of a stable market is something not lightly to be thrown away and if the Authority assures that, they will get the benefit. To start the Committee argument all over again would not get us much further tonight. The hon. Member suggested that we should look into the question of a two-tier system. I am willing to put that to the Authority and to get the Authority to study it. After a year's experience we might get something out of that.
The hon. Member for Caithness and Sutherland (Mr. George Y. Mackie) wondered if during the last two months the action of the Authority in offering a bonus had done anything to keep up the price of barley. It is anybody's guess whether this has helped or not, but what we know—and this was one of the main reasons for setting up the Authority—is that the levelling out of the market and selling of barley keeps a stable price, which is all to the good. If growers are not doing the job properly, knowing the Authority, I know that it will not hesitate to ask for powers to start buying.
I think that I have answered most of the questions that were asked. I think Mr. Donald Scott and Sir Charles Norman have done a first-class job in getting down to this Authority's work so effectively and quickly and we congratulate them on that. The Authority was not firmly established until 3rd June and it reflects great credit on them that after securing Ministerial approval to publish the scheme, they brought it out on 2nd July. This scheme should act as a

stimulus towards more orderly marketing of home-grown wheat and barley. The statistical services should prove of great value in the work next year. That is why they wanted to offer this bonus for contracts and do the statistical work, to go on next year with better information to do still better work.
If I have not satisfied the hon. Member for Cornwall, North, I know that he is not always easy to satisfy, but I think that tonight I have answered the points which he and his hon. Friends have raised and I hope that he will withdraw the Prayer.

Mr. Scott-Hopkins: There are some things which the hon. Gentleman has not answered—at least not satisfactorily. There is the disparity between the two rates of levy, and I do not think the Parliamentary Secretary has explained the difference between the two rates of levy. This should be clearly defined. I think there is enough money left, if the tonnage is correct, for forward contracts, but this would be going near the limit and it could well be that more money would be needed. But I agree with the hon. Gentleman in congratulating the Authority on getting down to work so quickly. I hope that its work will be fruitful. I hope that it will have money for purposes outside the bonus payments, to do the vital work of publicising itself.

Mr. Mackie: I make it quite clear, and I would have thought that the hon. Gentleman would have seen, that if we have 5½ million to 6 million acres of the one crop and 2½ million acres of the other and we have to raise the same amount of money from the two, there must be a higher levy on the one than on the other. Surely that must be plain to anybody.

Mr. Scott-Hopkins: I do not want to hinder the Authority's work. I therefore beg to ask leave to withdraw the Motion.

Motion, by leave, withdrawn.

BRITISH CATHEDRALS (MAINTENANCE)

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Grey.]

11.1 p.m.

Rear-Admiral Morgan Giles: Britain is almost uniquely fortunate in the variety and glory of its ancient buildings, both lay and ecclesiastical. There are various schemes in the country for the maintenance of these buildings, some very effective and some less so. But I believe that we have a blind spot as far as concerns our ancient cathedrals, because, as I shall show, there is no proper provision for their structural maintenance. Therefore, it is on these 28 ancient cathedrals that I particularly wish to focus attention.
First, let us look very broadly at the part which cathedrals play in our national life from a practical point of view. The cathedral is the mother church of the diocese and the church of the bishop, but this is only the formal position. In many ways, the cathedral becomes the symbol of unity of a city, a district or a county. In regions where there is a great influx of population and large impersonal housing estates, it is notoriously difficult to preserve the character and identity of the area and to make new arrivals feel that they belong and have become part of their new surroundings. Cathedrals, being famous landmarks and local symbols, are of great assistance in solving this nebulous social dfficulty. More than this, the immensity and grandeur of cathedral buildings gives the individual a sense of permanency in a world of changing values. Who among us does not know the emotional refreshment felt after attending a cathedral service? Without being irreverent, it can be compared to having taken a spiritual Alka-Seltzer. A Government who are so keen to give free medicine to the bodies of people should not lose sight of medicine for their souls also.
The architectural glories of Britain's ancient cathedrals are unlike anything else anywhere in the world—Winchester with its magnificent internal perpendiculars reaching upwards beyond human imagination, the spire of Salisbury seen from the hill pointing up to heaven for

the glory of God, and Durham, whose massive beauty is, I believe, not unknown to the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Public Building and Works.
Let us also not forget the musical and choral traditions which are enshrined in the work and the atmosphere of our cathedrals. Are these not a wonderful influence for good at a time when we are increasingly concerned about the fruitful use of leisure? All these things are not glories only of the past.
Being of a wartime generation, I was particularly moved by a paragraph in a pamphlet on Lincoln Cathedral, which said:
During the last war the three square towers became to thousands of bomber crews a welcome and a homely landmark: in the Chapel of St. Michael are the memorial books of Nos. 1 and 5 Bomber Groups of the Royal Air Force, with the names of 21,000 aircrew lost on operational missions. Nearby are the chapels for seamen and soldiers".
My point here is that each generation places its own value on our cathedrals, on their glories and on their influence in the community.
There is also the practical point of the importance of cathedrals as an attraction to tourists, particularly visitors from overseas, which must be of value from the point of view of our balance of payments. The British Travel Association tells me that about 2½ million visitors from overseas came to Britain last year and they spent between them £190 million. If one enters any travel agency abroad, in the United States, for example, the first thing one sees in any poster advertising the United Kingdom is a magnificent view of one of our ancient cathedrals.
I turn now to the problems facing the deans and chapters in looking after our cathedrals. They have to pay, first and foremost, the stipends of the cathedral clergy. I think everyone knows that. But, in addition, they have to pay the salaries of lay assistants and guides, vergers and caretakers. They have to pay for heating, lighting and cleaning. They have to insure the structures of the buildings for vast sums. They have to take out additional insurance against lightning, and, in these days, against malicious damage. They even have to insure against damage to ancient glass by sonic booms. They have to pay the


expenses of the cathedral schools and choir schools.
This category of expense is partially met out of the sum allocated by the Church Commissioners, but these incidental or additional expenses alone at Winchester, for example, cost £110 a day, or about £43,000 a year, over and above the sums which are available from the Church Commissioners.
Maintenance of the structure of these old buildings is most difficult. The very immensity and sense of permanence associated with huge cathedrals makes it difficult to realise that they will not necessarily remain with us for all time. No doubt, the druids thought the same about Stonehenge. In fact, these very old buildings, many centuries old, are much more difficult to look after than any building of more modern construction. For one thing, deterioration is far more rapid, and defects which would be quite minor if treated promptly soon become major problems. The cost of materials and labour has multiplied by five times since before the war, and skilled craftsmen and stonemasons are very scarce nowadays. There is a great cumulative backlog of maintenance remaining because of the war, and there is also the problem of erosion of stonework accelerated by air pollution.
Here are one or two examples of the plight of our ancient cathedrals. I have not been able to speak to all hon. Members representing constituencies where they are located. My hon. Friend the Member for Chichester (Mr. Loveys) gave me a leaflet in which one finds a magnificent photograph of Chichester Cathedral showing, unhappily, that secured against the side of it there is a large notice, "Danger—Falling masonry".
What is happening in Chichester, I understand, is that the flying buttresses, which are such a great architectural feature of it, are tilting outwards and pulling the walls gradually outwards with them so that there is very grave danger of the whole roof falling in. The Bishop of Chichester has said:
If we were to allow our ancient cathedral to collapse, it would be an irreplaceable loss, bringing shame to us and impoverishment to succeeding generations.
Another example is in Winchester itself, where a huge stone column has

begun to bulge and has had to be strapped round, and other stone columns inside are suspect. In Lincoln the massive roof timbers are ravaged by death watch beetle, and a lead roof three acres in extent is suspect and gales or even an exceptional heat wave might dislodge large sections of this huge area of lead. In Norwich also parts of the main fabric of the building are literally crumbling away.
It is a great shock to many people to know that defects of this sort are dealt with on a shoestring. What are the various sources of finance available for dealing with these situations? Many people think that it can be done by the Church Commissioners because they have a large amount of capital, but they very rightly retain their capital intact, which is, I think, the right policy for them to follow in a century when inflation makes it very unwise to spend capital on purposes which should be met by income. The essential point is that the Church Commissioners are really agents of Parliament, and I am not sure that this is always fully understood. The Church Commissioners, by virtue of the Cathedral Measure, 1963, have no power whatever to pay out any sums for the maintenance of the fabric of cathedrals, and this is why I say that we have a blind spot.
Next, many people think that this maintenance can be done by public subscription. There is no doubt that there have been some wonderful responses to appeals for donations and subscriptions. One thing has been most noticeable, that it is not only from one denomination. In all cases where cathedrals have made large appeals, the response has come from a very wide scatter of people of all denominations, including non-churchgoers.
But when it comes to these vast buildings we are talking of huge sums—£200,000 or £300,000. That is the sort of figure that we are talking about. Despite the generosity of individuals and despite enormous sums given by the Pilgrim Trust, in particular, from time to time, the response to these appeals is frequently inadequate. The inevitable happens. It leads to cobbling up, and 10 or 15 years later the work has to be done all over again.
Another possible source of finance is local government. The Historic Buildings Act, 1962, gives a certain amount of


latitude to local authorities to help in repairing ancient buildings of all sorts, including, if they wish, cathedrals. This is all right as far as it goes, but most of these very large appeals are larger than any individual local authority can wish upon its own ratepayers. My whole point is that this expense should be spread over the whole nation because our cathedrals are a national heritage and not just a local one. Cathedrals benefit not only those who live within the sound of their bells.
Then, of course, one thinks about another source of finance and inevitably one turns to the Exchequer. No doubt I will be told that this is a difficult time to ask for Exchequer money; but it always is a difficult time to ask the Exchequer for money. On this point I want to emphasise that I am aware that not all deans and chapters agree with the idea of public money being spent for this purpose, because the autonomy of deans and chapters must be paramount. This is fundamental.
If there were any strings attached to Government money, probably many deans and chapters would rather, in their own words, "beg their bread in desolate places." I must say that because otherwise I should find myself in hot water with half the deans in England. But we could get over it readily because, under the suggestion I shall make, detailed distribution would be carried out by a body which might be analogous to the University Grants Committee. It might be, for instance, the Cathedral Commission of the Church Assembly. I claim that it would be just as appropriate to use central Government funds for this purpose as for defence, because the Church, with appropriate outward symbols such as cathedrals, is one of the bastions of the defence of our way of life against the enemy within and the enemy without.
To show that I am not being denominational in this, I want to quote the example of the Roman Catholic church I saw in Italy at the time of the 1948 elections. Outside it was an enormous banner which read: "God can see you vote and Stalin cannot."
The concrete proposal I should like to make is that the Exchequer might consider paying to the Church Commissioners sums up to a certain annual limit—no

one can expect an open-ended commitment—based on meeting, £ for £, the response to major appeals made for maintenance. This would be a good way of ensuring that public money should only be spent where there was real public enthusiasm for the project.
If I were to make any more concrete proposal, Mr. Deputy Speaker, no doubt you would rule me out of order in an Adjournment debate, so I end by saying that naturally I do not expect any firm promises tonight, but I ask the hon. Gentleman for an undertaking to consider this problem seriously in all its aspects and subsequently to make a statement to the House giving the results of such consideration.
All I have said can be summed up thus: earlier generations and less affluent generations have somehow managed to keep our great cathedrals maintained. Are we willing to be the generation which falls down on the job?

11.18 p.m.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Public Building and Works (Mr. James Boyden): The subject of this debate is one which is very near my own sympathies. I moved in Durham partly because of the Cathedral. In my new home I had a full view of its majesty and one of the sadnesses of moving south was that I lost that glorious view from my window.
I also find it difficult to decide which of the hon. and gallant Gentleman's two choices, Winchester or Salisbury, I would vote for. They are both splendid buildings, and only a few weeks ago I was in Winchester and twice went to his very fine Cathedral. I served on the Ecclesiastical Committee when the Cathedrals Measure was passed, so I have considerable sympathy with the subject.
The Church Assembly thinks that the importance of cathedrals in our culture is growing. There may be different views about that, but it is worth quoting from the Church Assembly pamphlet, "Report of the Cathedral Commission", in which it is said—and this is quite a novel thought for some people—
… owing to the mobility which the motorcar has brought to modern life, Cathedrals both old and new become places of pilgrimage far in excess of anything previously known.


It goes on to say:
Far from being outmoded, the Cathedral Churches of England have never before served as living centres of worship for such a wide variety of ordinary Church members".
And, of course, a large section of the public, which is perhaps not so committed to the services, finds considerable spiritual refreshment in them in the way that the hon. and gallant Gentleman suggested. In the same pamphlet there is a sentence about the musical connections of the cathedrals:
The tradition of Cathedral music is an artistic heritage comparable in quality to the heritage in stone preserved by the buildings themselves.
The hon. and gallant Gentleman is pushing at a general door where there will be a fairly considerable amount of public Interest.
He says that the times are unpropitious. I feel that I ought to tell him that my own Ministry has this type of consideration very much in mind and I ought to explain the background to the way in which both the Church of England and the Ministry of Public Building and Works have come to regard the question of subsidies for living churches.
Under the Ancient Monuments Acts, 1913 to 1953, no ecclesiastical building at the time being used for ecclesiastical purposes is subject to the provisions of the Acts providing for protection, grant or guardianship by the Ministry. The Ministry has never considered the possibility of extending the Ancient Monuments powers to churches. Indeed, when the 1913 Act was in preparation the Archbishop of Canterbury acquiesced in this and later in the House of Lords debate opposed an attempt to bring churches, especially cathedrals, under that Act. None of the English churches since then has made any representation about churches in use.
Under the Historic Buildings and Ancient Monuments Act, 1953, grants could be made to churches in use. The relevant provision says that any building appearing to the Minister to be of outstanding historic or architectural interest is eligible for grant. Churches are not specifically excluded. However, when the Act was being passed, there was no intention to make grants to churches in use and in the debates Mr. Molson, the

then Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Works, said:
Ecclesiastical buildings are not excluded in words from the Bill, but it is not our intention that this modest sum …"—
the sum then available—
should be used for the preservation of churches."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 3rd July, 1953; Vol. 517, c. 813.]
The situation is that the Minister has power to make grants to churches but has decided not to use it.

Mr. Tom Driberg: Is it not the case, however, that grants have been made to ecclesiastical properties such as Farnham Castle?

Mr. Boyden: Yes. Grants have been made to chapels in private use which are part—I was about to say part of an architectural complex—which are chapels in use and which are of special architectural or historic interest. They have not been made for cathedrals themselves, although there have been grants for buildings within the precincts of cathedrals, for instance, the cloisters at Wells.
There are historical reasons why grants are made for cathedrals in use in Scotland, in Glasgow and Dunblane, for instance, but I will not go into them except to say that they are not good precedents for conceding the general point which the hon. and gallant Gentleman is making about grants for cathedrals in general.
In Scotland there are grants for cathedrals which are not used. The five in particular are Elgin, Fortrose, St. Andrews, Dunkeld, and St. Machar's, Aberdeen. The point is that the cathedrals are not in use for ecclesiastical purposes under the Church of England. The Anglican Church in England has not made representations about this, although the Church of Scotland has done so. When I was in Scotland fairly recently on a general Ministry visit, representations were made to me. I dare say that the hon. and gallant Gentleman knows that discussions are going on over Government assistance for redundant churches. Legislation will be needed for this. Amicable discussions have been held and the Government have agreed, as did the previous Government, to contribute something of the order of £200,000 over a five-year period for redundant Anglican churches, consequent upon the Church


itself making comparable contributions. So movement is taking place.
Legislation required for redundant churches is likely to be some time maturing and one ought to set the problem of the cathedrals against the size of the problem which the Church itself faces as a whole. This is not an argument against the State contributions; it is an argument to say that the problem has been there for a long time, that everybody who is connected with it realises the size of the problem, and very serious consideration will be given to any move in the way the hon. and gallant Gentleman wants. The Church Assembly document says on the fabric of the cathedrals:
In many Cathedrals the problems of maintaining the fabric are on such a vast scale that no possible scheme could provide an adequate answer. They must be left to struggle with their problems, drawing as fully as possible upon local or national interest in the building itself.
It says, in a rather defeatist way:
Final and complete provision must, therefore, be ruled out of practical consideration.
That is not to say that the public, the Church, does not need to be alerted to the need for private generosity towards the cathedrals. Those who are interested in

the splendid architectural heritage, and in our musical and spiritual heritage, will be most grateful to the hon. and gallant Gentleman for ventilating this subject, and showing the size of the problem, the degree and difficulty of it. In this connection, all I can say is that he has my personal sympathy and that the Government are well aware of the problem.

Mr. Driberg: From what my hon. Friend has said, it seems clear that there can be grants, on the recommendation of the Historic Buildings Council, from his Ministry to the cathedrals, and I do not think that deans should be afraid of strings, because the sort of strings attached to these grants are fairly loose, including principally the requirement that the building assisted by a grant should be open to the public at reasonable times, which obviously would apply to a cathedral. That is one method by which it could be done fairly easily, though, of course, the total sum available through the Historic Buildings Council would have to be greatly increased from the modest sum at present made available.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at half-past Eleven o'clock.